The Iraq-Niger Uranium Controversy and the Outing of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson

An examination of the events surrounding the US and British claims that Iraq tried to purchase ‘yellowcake’ uranium from Niger, and the outing of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson as part of an attempt to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson.

CIA officer Craig Schmall, who regularly briefed both Lewis Libby and his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, testifies that Libby had spoken to him about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s Niger trip on June 14, 2003 (see 7:00 a.m. June 14, 2003). [MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]Libby Quizzed Schmall about Wilson Trip - Schmall is now a manager in the Directorate of Intelligence. In 2003, he was the CIA’s assigned briefer for Libby and later Cheney. He recalls that at the June 14 briefing, Libby was “annoyed” that someone at the CIA had apparently discussed sensitive issues with a reporter, specifically regarding allegations that Cheney was pressuring CIA officials to produce slanted intelligence “proving” Iraq harbored WMDs. He then asked Schmall about Wilson’s Niger trip. Libby wanted to know why someone told Wilson that the Office of the Vice President had pushed for his trip to Niger. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/24/2007]'Grave Danger' of Leaking CIA Official's Identity - Schmall testifies that when he read Robert Novak’s column outing Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), he expressed his concerns to both Cheney and Libby. “I thought there was a grave danger leaking the name of a CIA officer,” Schmall says he told the two. “Foreign intelligence services where she served now have the opportunity to investigate everyone whom she had come in contact with. They could be arrested, tortured, or killed.” [National Journal, 2/15/2007]Jury Cannot Consider Plame Wilson's CIA Status - Before the defense cross-examines Schmall, Judge Reggie Walton instructs the jury that it will not receive evidence of Plame Wilson’s CIA status—i.e. whether or not she was a covert official—and whether her outing posed a real risk to national security. According to a transcript by court observer and progressive blogger Marcy Wheeler, Walton says: “Her actual status, or damage, are totally irrelevant to your assessment of defendant’s guilt or innocence. You may not speculate or guess about them. You may consider what Mr. Libby believed about her status.” [Marcy Wheeler, 1/24/2007]Defense Impugns Schmall's Memory - Defense lawyer John Cline reads item after item from the 27 points in a morning briefing prepared for Libby by Schmall; the CIA briefer cannot recall any of the items. “This was very important stuff,” Cline observes. The Associated Press will later write, “Cline wants to make the point that if Schmall cannot remember the details of the briefing—which included more than two dozen potential terrorist threats or intelligence issues—it is plausible Libby forgot about it, too.” Cline also establishes that Schmall is not clear about who from the prosecution was present during his 2004 discussion with FBI interviewers (see April 22, 2004). [Associated Press, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007; New York Times, 2/4/2007]Judge: 'Suicide' if Libby Fails to Testify - The defense’s cross-examination of Schmall spills over into the morning of January 25. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald performs a brief redirect of Schmall, attempting to establish his reliable memory. The defense successfully objects to Fitzgerald’s line of questionining; Wheeler speculates that Fitzgerald is trying to lead Schmall too strongly. Lawyers for both sides engage in a lengthy sidebar over whether the defense can use Schmall as part of its “memory defense” strategy (see January 31, 2006) without actually putting Libby on the stand; Walton says the defense will commit “suicide” if Libby fails to testify (see January 24, 2007). Walton instructs the jury that Cline’s questions are not evidence, they are only to consider Schmall’s answers. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007]

Patrick Fitzgerald, prosecuting Lewis Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice, files a motion with the court alleging a new motive for Libby to have lied to investigators (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Fitzgerald argues that since Libby signed non-disclosure agreements in connection with his White House employment, by testifying truthfully about his leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status to reporters, he risked losing his job. “The government intends to prove that, at the time he made the charged false statements, defendant was aware that, if Ms. Wilson’s employment status was in fact classified, or that Ms. Wilson was in fact a covert CIA officer, in addition to potential criminal prosecution under a number of statutes, defendant faced the possible loss of his security clearances, removal from office, and termination from employment as a result of his disclosures to New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper” (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Fitzgerald intends to introduce into evidence five non-disclosure agreements signed by Libby. According to lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the progressive blog TalkLeft, Fitzgerald’s motion is designed to counter defense arguments that Libby had no motive to lie under oath. Merritt is not convinced of Fitzgerald’s argument, writing: “I’m not sold on this motion. There’s no linkage to Libby’s focus on the agreements at the time he was interviewed by the FBI or testified to the grand jury. I could see it if Fitz had evidence of a conversation Libby had with someone about his fear that his comments to reporters violated the non-disclosure agreements. But, those agreements are standard for people in sensitive government positions. Had he re-read them or been reminded of them before his interviews with FBI agents or grand jury testimony? Without evidence that Libby was concerned about the non-disclosure agreements at the time of his statements, I don’t think the mere existence of them establishes motive.” [Jeralyn Merritt, 1/26/2007]

Cathie Martin entering the courthouse. [Source: New York Times]Cathie Martin, the former spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney, testifies that she told Cheney and his former chief of staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status weeks before Libby claims to have learned that information from reporter Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003 and March 24, 2004). [CBS News, 1/25/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] At the time in question, Martin was Cheney’s assistant for public affairs. She now works at the White House as the deputy director of communications for policy and planning. As Cheney’s assistant, she worked closely with Libby and handled most press inquiries for Cheney and Libby. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007]Passed along Information about Plame Wilson to Libby, Cheney - Martin testifies that in her presence Libby spoke with a senior CIA official on the telephone, and asked about the Joseph Wilson trip to Niger. She says she then spoke with CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, who told her that Wilson went to Niger on behalf of the agency, and that Wilson’s wife worked at the agency (see 5:25 p.m. June 10, 2003). Martin then says that she subsequently told both Libby and Cheney that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA (see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003). The International Herald Tribune notes: “The perspective she laid out under questioning from a federal prosecutor was damaging to Libby.… She bolstered the prosecution’s assertion that Libby was fully aware of [Plame] Wilson’s identity from a number of administration officials, and did not first learn about her from reporters, as he has claimed. Perhaps more important[ly], she testified as a former close colleague of Libby’s and demonstrated her familiarity with him by repeatedly referring to him by his nickname, Scooter.” [International Herald Tribune, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007] Of Plame Wilson’s outing by Robert Novak (see July 14, 2003), she testifies, “I knew it was a big deal that he had disclosed it.” [Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007]Testifies that Cheney Coordinated Attack on Wilson - Martin also gives detailed evidence that it was Cheney who coordinated the White House counterattack against Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, in retaliation for his op-ed debunking administration claims that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003). She testifies that during the first week of July 2003, she and her staff were told to increase their monitoring of the media, including television news (which until that point had not been monitored closely), and to make transcripts of everything that was said pertaining to administration policies and issues. She testifies that Cheney and Libby were both very interested in what the media was reporting about Iraqi WMDs, and whether Cheney’s office had ordered Joseph Wilson to go to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). She discusses the talking points she disseminated to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer regarding Cheney’s lack of involvement in sending Wilson to Niger (see 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003). Martin testifies that she had already been using those talking points, based on conversations she had had with Libby, but sent the memo to Fleischer because of Wilson’s appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows (see July 6, 2003). According to Martin, Cheney “dictated” the talking points for Fleischer, and included direct quotes from the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002), which had been partially declassified without her knowledge (see July 12, 2003)—she says she urged Cheney and Libby to declassify the NIE before leaking information from it to reporters. (Judge Reggie Walton tells the jury, “You are instructed that there is no dispute between the parties that on July 8 certain portions of the NIE had been declassified, although Ms. Martin had not been made aware of the declassification.”) Martin testifies that Cheney told Libby to speak directly to reporters about Wilson, effectively bypassing her and other communications staffers in his office. Martin also says she told Cheney and Libby that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA days before Libby claims he “first” learned it from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Martin refuses to confirm that either Cheney or Libby suggested leaking Plame Wilson’s identity as part of a strategy to discredit her husband. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]Falsely Accused of Leaking Information to NBC Reporter - Martin goes on to describe a senior staff meeting at the White House, where she was implictly accused of leaking information to NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell (see July 9, 2003). She denies leaking the information to Mitchell, and testifies that Libby spoke with Mitchell about such subjects. [International Herald Tribune, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007]Defense Notes Change in Martin's Testimony - The defense notes that Martin has changed the dates of some of her recollections from her previous statements to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigators. [International Herald Tribune, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007; New York Times, 2/4/2007] The defense’s cross-examination of Martin extends into Monday, January 29; Fitzgerald briefly redirects her testimony. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007]Attempt to Slow Trial Fails - A January 25 attempt by defense attorney Theodore Wells to slow the pace of the trial fails. Wells attempts to delay Martin’s testimony by complaining that he has not had an opportunity to review what he calls a “whole box” of the original copies of Martin’s notes. It would, Wells says, take hours for the defense team to read and review the notes. Fitzgerald reminds the court that the defense has had the notes for a year. Wells then complains that some of the notes are illegible. “I think that’s a bit of a spin,” Fitzgerald retorts, noting that he is only using about four pages of notes as evidence. “These copies were legible. Show me the pages that weren’t legible.” Judge Reggie Walton says that since it would be unethical for Wells to misrepresent his inability to read the documents, he has to accept Wells’s assertion. Fitzgerald then produces the notes, a small stack of documents that do not comprise a “whole box.” Walton, apparently exasperated, tells Wells he can review the notes during his lunch hour, and refuses to delay the trial. [New York Times, 2/10/2007]

After a heated debate in the courtroom, Lewis Libby’s lawyers file a brief with the court attempting to preclude the testimony of former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. The lawyers say that Fleischer’s testimony is potentially “inflammatory” and “prejudicial” against their client, and speculate that by testifying Fleischer is attempting “to curry favor with the government.” The lawyers are referring to the fact that Fleischer received immunity from prosecution for his cooperation with the prosecutors (see February 13, 2004). Moreover, the lawyers state, Fleischer’s state of mind is relevant to the motion. “[I]t appears that the government is attempting to persuade the jury through Mr. Fleischer’s testimony that Mr. Libby had a motive to lie because he was in a similar position to Mr. Fleischer. Because Mr. Fleischer feared criminal prosecution in light of the article in question [referring to a Washington Post article the government intends to introduce into evidence—see September 28, 2003], this argument goes, Mr. Libby must have have a similar fear, and therefore motive to lie. This court should not allow the government to prejudice Mr. Libby by using testimony concerning Mr. Fleischer’s state of mind for this impermissible purpose.” The prosecution notes that in defense lawyer Theodore Well’s opening statement (see January 23, 2007), the jury was already told of Fleischer’s immunity, and if the defense intends on attacking Fleischer, he needs to be able to explain why he asked for immunity. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 1/27/2007] The motion will be denied; Fleischer will testify two days later (see January 29, 2007).

Ari Fleischer, outside the courthouse where the Libby trial is underway. [Source: Life]Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer testifies in the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007), and tells the court that he learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Libby three days before Libby has said he first learned of it. If Fleischer is telling the truth, then Libby cannot have been truthful in his claims. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has told the court that in 2004 he offered Fleischer blanket immunity in return for his testimony (see February 13, 2004), without being sure what Fleischer would say in court. The defense team calls the arrangement highly unusual, and days before attempted to bar Fleischer’s testimony (see January 25-27, 2007). [MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2009] The prosecution quickly elicits Fleischer’s admission that if he lies under oath, his immunity agreement becomes void and he, too, can be prosecuted. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2009]Libby Told Fleischer of Plame Wilson's Identity - Testifying under oath, Fleischer tells prosecuting attorney Peter Zeidenberg (handling the examination for Fitzgerald) that he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby during a lunch with him on July 7, the day after Plame Wilson’s husband’s controversial op-ed appeared in the New York Times (see July 6, 2003). Libby has told reporters he first learned about Plame Wilson’s identity on either July 10 or July 11 from NBC reporter Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004). According to Fleischer, Libby told him: “Ambassador [Joseph] Wilson was sent by his wife. His wife works for the CIA.” Fleischer testifies that Libby referred to Wilson’s wife by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Fleischer says, “He added it was hush-hush, on the Q.T., and that most people didn’t know it.” Fleischer also notes that Libby told him Plame Wilson worked in the Counterproliferation Division, where almost everyone is covert, though he testifies that he knows little about the CIA’s internal structure. Four days later, Fleischer heard of Plame Wilson’s CIA status again, that time from White House communications director Dan Bartlett (see July 6-10, 2003). Fleischer informed conservative columnist Robert Novak of Plame Wilson’s CIA status the same day he learned of it from Libby (see July 7, 2003), and told reporters David Gregory and John Dickerson the same information a week later in what he calls a casual conversation (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Fleischer insists he believed the information about Plame Wilson was not classified, saying, “[N]ever in my wildest dreams [did I think] this information would be classified.” [CBS News, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Washington Post, 1/30/2007; National Journal, 2/19/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2009]Defense Cross - The defense notes that Fleischer originally mispronounced Plame Wilson’s maiden name as “plah-MAY,” indicating that he may have read about her instead of being told of her identity. Fleischer says under cross-examination that he did not reveal Plame Wilson’s identity to reporters until he heard about the CIA official from a second White House aide, Bartlett (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, and July 15, 2005). It was after Bartlett’s “vent” about Wilson that Fleischer says he decided to inform two reporters, NBC’s David Gregory and Time’s John Dickerson, of Plame Wilson’s CIA status. (Dickerson has said Fleischer did not tell him Plame Wilson was a CIA official—see February 7, 2006.) Fleischer testifies that neither Libby nor Bartlett invoked a White House protocol under which colleagues warned him when they were providing classified information that could not be discussed with reporters. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Washington Post, 1/30/2007; New York Times, 2/4/2007]Post: Fleischer Impugns Libby 'Memory Defense' - The Washington Post calls Fleischer “the most important prosecution witness to date,” and continues: “Though a series of government officials have told the jury that Libby eagerly sought information about [Wilson], Fleischer was the first witness to say Libby then passed on what he learned: that Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer who had sent him on a trip to Africa.… Fleischer also reinforced the prosecution’s central argument: that Libby had been so determined to learn and spread information about Wilson and Plame that he could not have forgotten his efforts” (see January 31, 2006). [Washington Post, 1/30/2007] In 2004, Libby testified that he could not remember if he discussed Plame Wilson with Fleischer, though he admitted that he may have. [US Department of Justice, 3/5/2004 ]

In brief, cautious testimony in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial, David Addington, the former senior counsel to Vice President Cheney and Libby’s successor as Cheney’s chief of staff, tells the court that in September 2003, Libby asked Addington whether the president had the authority to declassify government secrets and whether the CIA kept paperwork documenting its work. Addington says he replied yes to both (see September 2003); Addington testifies that Libby did not explain his request, and during the conversation, gestured at Addington as if to ask him to keep his voice down. Libby, Addington testifies, then told him, “I didn’t do it.” Addington says he did not ask Libby what “it” was, but surmised that he may have been referring to Joseph Wilson’s criticism of the Iraq war. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald believes Libby was denying his involvement in the leak of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press. Addington also recalls an earlier meeting with Libby (see July 8, 2003), where Libby asked about the CIA paperwork involving sending a civilian overseas on a mission, an apparent reference to Wilson. Libby also asked Addington how one might determine if a CIA employee was working undercover. Addington, a former CIA counsel, told Libby there is no way to find that out, and testifies that he gave Libby a highlighted copy of the federal law barring disclosure of the identity of covert agents. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/29/2007; Washington Post, 1/30/2007; Associated Press, 1/30/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]

Judith Miller, center, enters the courtroom. Her lawyer Robert Bennett is escorting her inside. [Source: Kevin Wolf / AP]Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who spent 85 days in jail trying to avoid testifying to the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 6, 2005), testifies in the trial of former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007). Miller testifies that Libby told her in confidence that the wife of a prominent critic of the Iraq war, Joseph Wilson, worked at the CIA (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Libby has testified that he first learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status three weeks later, from reporter Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003 and March 24, 2004). [CBS News, 1/25/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007]'Perverted War of Leaks' - During their first meeting, Miller testifies: “Mr. Libby appeared to me to be agitated and frustrated and angry. He is a very low key and controlled guy, but he seemed annoyed.” Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asks, “Did he indicate what he was annoyed at?” Miller replies, “He was concerned that the CIA was beginning to backpedal to try to distance itself from the unequivocal intelligence estimates it had provided before the war.” She goes on to say that Libby had called the CIA’s action “a perverted war of leaks.” During their subsequent meetings, Libby exhibited an increasing irritation with the idea that the CIA would leak information to put distance between itself and earlier estimates of Iraqi WMD capabilities. According to Miller: “He said that nobody had ever [sic] come to the White House from the CIA and said, ‘Mr. President, this is not right.’ He felt that if the CIA had had such doubts, they should have shared them with the president.” Outing Plame Wilson - Miller testifies that Libby broached the subject of Joseph Wilson’s trip to Africa (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) during their first meeting. At the time, Wilson was still criticizing the administration anonymously (see May 6, 2003), and few outside Washington knew who he was. Miller says that Libby began by calling Wilson “that clandestine guy,” and only later began referring to him by name. Miller testifies, “He [Libby] said the vice president did not know that Mr. Wilson had been sent on this trip” (see March 5, 2002). Libby told Miller that Cheney did not know of Wilson and “did not get a readout” on Wilson’s findings. As “an aside,” Miller testifies, Libby told her during their first meeting that Wilson’s wife “worked in the bureau.” Miller says at first she was not sure what he was referring to, and speculated that “the bureau” might mean the FBI, but, she says, “it became clear that he was referring to the CIA.” Libby never indicated whether Plame Wilson was a covert official, but during the second meeting, he told her (incorrectly) that Plame Wilson worked in WINPAC, the Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control Center of the CIA. Libby, Miller testifies, viewed the entire Wilson trip as “a ruse—that’s the word he used—an irrelevancy.” She confirms that during their second meeting, Libby took the unprecedented step of having her identify him in her reporting as “a former Hill staffer,” an apparent attempt to mislead readers into thinking the information he was providing to her was coming from someone who used to work in Congress. Miller testifies that she wanted to write about Plame Wilson being a CIA official, but her editor at the Times, Jill Abramson, refused to allow it. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007; National Review, 1/31/2007]Leaking NIE Material - Miller says that Libby began providing her with sensitive information culled from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE—see October 1, 2002) during their second and third meetings. Libby told her that the classified information from the NIE was even stronger in its support of Iraqi WMD claims than what he was giving her. Miller wasn’t sure if the information Libby gave her was classified or unclassified. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007]'Refreshed' Memory with Notes - Fitzgerald shows Miller that in her initial testimony before his grand jury (see September 30, 2005), she failed to mention her first discussion of Plame Wilson’s identity with Libby on June 23. Miller claims that she refreshed her memory of that first discussion from her notes of the meeting, which she found in a shopping bag near her desk at the Times, and clarified her testimony in a later appearance (see October 12, 2005). Defense Focuses on Self-Contradictions - During the defense’s cross-examination, Libby’s attorney William Jeffress hammers at Miller over her seemingly contradictory testimony, sometimes eliciting testy responses. Miller tells the court that her memory “is mostly note-driven,” and that rereading the notes “brought back these memories” of the June 23 meeting. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007; National Review, 1/31/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] Author Marcy Wheeler, observing the proceedings for the progressive blog FireDogLake, notes that Miller seems extremely nervous and fidgety under Jeffress’s cross-examination. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007] Miller’s January 30 court testimony ends almost an hour ahead of schedule after Jeffress attempts to ask her about other sources besides Libby with whom she may have discussed Wilson. Miller’s attorney, Bob Bennett, objects, saying questions about other sources are off limits. Judge Reggie Walton dismisses the jury for the day and listens to arguments for and against the line of questioning. Jeffress tells Walton, “I think she’s going to say she couldn’t remember which is very important to her credibility.” Defense lawyer Theodore Wells adds that it is important to have Miller answer the question because it would cast doubt on her testimony. “This is classic 101 [witness] impeachment,” he says. Walton will rule against the line of questioning, agreeing with Fitzgerald that quizzing Miller about her information on Iraqi WMDs is irrelevant to the charges pending against Libby. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007; Wall Street Journal, 1/31/2007]'I Just Don't Remember' - The next day, Jeffress continues to aggressively cross-examine Miller. She tells the court she is not completely sure she learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby before she learned it elsewhere, giving Libby’s lawyers an avenue to challenge her memory and her credibility. Miller now says she cannot be “absolutely, absolutely certain” that she first heard about Plame Wilson from Libby. As with earlier government witnesses (see January 23-24, 2007, January 24-25, 2007, January 24, 2007, and January 29, 2007), the defense lawyers challenge Miller’s memory and recollection of events. Jeffress notes that she misspelled Plame Wilson’s name in her notes, identifying her as “Valerie Flame.” Miller shows signs of irritation during the cross-examination, at one point repeating loudly: “I just don’t remember. I don’t remember.” [Marcy Wheeler, 1/30/2007; New York Times, 1/31/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/31/2007; New York Times, 2/4/2007]

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald enters a copy of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s July 13, 2003 op-ed, “National House of Waffles,” into evidence in the Lewis Libby trial. The copy is heavily marked with notes from Libby. Fitzgerald blacked out most of the column, not because of security concerns, but to focus the jury’s attention on the section at the bottom. He directs the jury’s attention to the section that reads: “When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this ‘evidence’ could not be attributed to American intelligence because the CIA had already debunked it. [Condoleezza] Rice did not throw out the line, even though the CIA had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in. And that had to be Dick Cheney’s office. Joseph Wilson, former US ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president’s office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful” (see July 6, 2003). Libby’s notes read in part, “not us” and “not to us” in response to Dowd’s suggestions that the CIA had debunked the evidence pointing to an Iraqi attempt to obtain Nigerien uranium. [National Public Radio, 3/7/2007; Office of the Special Prosecutor, 5/2007 ]

Time reporter Matt Cooper testifies at the perjury and obstruction trial of former White House official Lewis “Scooter” Libby about his conversations with Libby concerning the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. Cooper confirms that he learned that Plame Wilson worked with the CIA from both Libby and White House political strategist Karl Rove (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), but did not ask Libby how he knew Plame Wilson was indeed a CIA officer. According to Cooper, when he mentioned learning from Rove that Plame Wilson was a CIA officer, Libby said, “I’ve heard that too.” Cooper says that Libby did not qualify his statement in any way, though in 2004, Libby testified to the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) that he told both Cooper and reporter Judith Miller that he was merely citing rumors he had heard from other reporters (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Cooper confirms that Libby did not indicate the information about Plame Wilson was classified, nor did he say anything about learning it from other journalists. Libby’s lawyers attack Cooper’s credibility, noting that his testimony does not precisely match what he told his editors at the time, and suggest he could have learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from other reporters. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/31/2007; Washington Post, 2/1/2007; National Review, 2/1/2007; New York Times, 2/4/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Cooper initially said that he considered Libby’s remark “off the record,” a term reporters use to indicate that a comment cannot be used in print. Later, Cooper says he considered it confirmation that could be used as background attribution. He also acknowledges that he changed the wording of Libby’s quote slightly for the Time article. Cooper testifies that he didn’t take any notes on that exchange or include it in his memo to his editor and fellow reporters. “I can’t explain that,” he says. “It was late in the day. I didn’t write it down, but it is my memory.” [Associated Press, 1/31/2007]Rove's Involvement - Cooper’s testimony gives defense lawyers the opportunity to bring up Rove’s involvement, since Cooper learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from Rove before he learned it from Libby (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). Cooper says that he was told by Rove that Plame Wilson, not Vice President Dick Cheney, sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see July 6, 2003). [CBS News, 1/25/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 1/31/2007]Sloppy Journalism - The Washington Post notes of Cooper’s testimony juxtaposed with Judith Miller’s, who preceded him on the stand (see January 30-31, 2007): “The pair’s turn on the witness stand also provided an unflattering portrayal of how some of Washington’s most prominent journalists work. If the testimony of half a dozen government officials earlier in the trial exposed infighting at the highest levels of the Bush administration, the testimony of Cooper and Miller exposed jurors—and the public—to the sloppy and incomplete note-taking of reporters, their inability to remember crucial interviews, and, in Miller’s case, important interview notes stuffed into a shopping bag under her desk.” [Washington Post, 2/1/2007]

In a column ironically titled “Free Scooter Libby!” Time columnist Michael Kinsley notes the damage done to the idea of the “anonymous source” in the Plame Wilson investigation and the Libby perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007). Leaks from anonymous sources are widely believed to be necessary to keep government honest, Kinsley notes, and journalists must not be asked to testify as to those sources. Kinsley goes on to note that in this case, instead of heroic whistleblowers, reporters such as the New York Times’s Judith Miller were protecting White House officials trying to spin the public. And, he continues, it is an established crime to blow the undercover status of a CIA officer such as Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 21, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, and October 23-24, 2003). Most journalists were somberly critical of Miller’s forced testimony, and, in contrast, are writing about the Libby trial in a “jaunty to the point of slapstick” manner. But ‘[i]t takes two” to “create a leak,” a government official on one end and a reporter on the other. Kinsley calls the Miller/Libby leak “a bad leak.” Plame Wilson’s covert status “should have stayed secret.” He concludes: “If leaks are vital to the freedom of the press, then surely both of the people needed to create a leak—the reporter and the source—deserve protection. If Judy Miller is a martyr of press freedom, then so is Scooter Libby.” [Time, 1/31/2007]

Judge Reggie Walton excuses a juror from further service in the Lewis Libby trial. The juror explains that her employer will not pay her salary any longer if she continues to serve on the jury, and she cannot continue without being paid more than the $35/day the court pays jurors. Walton dismisses the juror and observes, “We have 14 jurors who all look healthy—you gotta stay that way.” This is the second juror to be excused from serving. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/31/2007]

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asks Judge Reggie Walton if he can introduce certain evidence during the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Fitzgerald wants to introduce a letter former White House aide Libby wrote to reporter Judith Miller that gave her permission to reveal him as her source for Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see September 15, 2005). With the jury out of the room, Fitzgerald says the note’s cryptic references to Colorado aspen trees being “bound at the roots” shows that Libby was trying to convey a message to Miller: a plea to lie to the grand jury and back up his version of events. Fitzgerald says the note demonstrates Libby’s “consciousness of guilt.” Walton notes that Miller’s 2005 testimony (see September 30, 2005 and October 12, 2005) did not help Libby, and contributed to the indictment against him (see October 28, 2005). Fitzgerald replies: “We don’t think that the letter worked. He told her what he wanted her to say.” Walton defers a decision on the Libby note. [New York Times, 1/31/2007]

Columnist Byron York, writing for the conservative National Review, writes that two of the five felony counts against Lewis Libby have so little basis in evidence that it is difficult to see how Libby could be found guilty on those charges. York writes that a charge of perjury and a charge of making false statements depend entirely on the testimony of one person, former Time reporter Matthew Cooper, who testified for the prosecution the day before the column is published (see January 31, 2007). York states that both charges rest on a single line of hastily typed notes from Cooper: “had somethine and about the wilson thing and not sure if it’s ever,” and Cooper’s “shaky” testimony. York interprets Cooper’s testimony as indicating he is not now sure what he meant when he typed that line, and is unsure if it applies to the question of whether Libby told him about CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. Cooper testified that Libby confirmed for him that he had “heard” Plame Wilson was the CIA official who sent her husband, Joseph Wilson, on a fact-finding mission to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003). According to York, Cooper’s testimony before the Fitzgerald grand jury in 2005 (see July 13, 2005) and the snippet of Cooper’s notes “gave the jury all the evidence it would receive on Counts Three and Five of the indictment. Count Three accused Libby of making a false statement to the FBI during interviews on October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003. That false statement consisted of Libby telling the FBI that when he talked to Cooper, he told Cooper that he, Libby, had been hearing about Mrs. Wilson from reporters. That statement was false, Fitzgerald alleged, because Cooper said it never happened.” York argues that Cooper’s trial testimony does not support his testimony before the grand jury. [National Review, 2/1/2007]

FBI agent Deborah Bond testifies for the prosecution in the trial of former White House official Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007). Bond took over the Libby investigation when the previous head, John Eckenrode (see November 24, 2003), retired. She discusses two interviews she held with Libby, in October and November 2003 respectively (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). She says that in one interview Libby acknowledged that his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, “may have talked” on July 12, 2003, about telling the press that former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, worked at the CIA, though Libby told her that he was “not sure” the conversation actually took place. According to Bond, Libby acknowledged that he and Cheney “may have” discussed the Plame Wilson matter the same day, while the two flew back to Washington from Norfolk aboard Air Force Two (see July 12, 2003); Libby said that Cheney might have learned about Plame Wilson’s CIA status from CIA Director George Tenet or another CIA official, though he was not sure. Cheney was wondering how to discredit Plame Wilson’s husband, war critic Joseph Wilson. Days before, Cheney had written in the margin of an op-ed by Wilson a question about the possibility of Plame Wilson sending her husband on a fact-finding “junket” to Niger (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After). Libby told the FBI during a November 2003 interview that, in the agent’s words, “there was a discussion whether to report to the press that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA” during that July 12 flight. “Mr. Libby told us he believed they may have talked about it but he wasn’t sure.” In the hours after the discussion, Libby called reporter Judith Miller; in their conversation, he outed Plame Wilson as a CIA official and accused her of sending her husband to Niger (see Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), though Bond testifies that Libby denied ever mentioning Plame Wilson to Miller. Libby also called Time reporter Matthew Cooper and confirmed that Plame Wilson was a CIA officer, and had been involved in her husband’s trip (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff says of Bond’s testimony, “This is significant, because it bring [sic] Cheney himself far more directly into the case, and for the first time suggests that it was the vice president who wanted the news about Wilson’s wife to be circulated to the news media.” Bond’s testimony also establishes the first time Libby claimed he “forgot” about learning Plame Wilson’s CIA status until “remembering” in October 2003. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Washington Post, 2/2/2007; Associated Press, 2/2/2007; National Journal, 2/15/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] The defense presses Bond to acknowledge that Libby told her he was unsure of his memory and needed to consult his notes to be sure of his facts. Defense lawyer Theodore Wells also notes that Bond’s notes from the Libby interview are incomplete, and fail to mention Libby’s denials of disclosing Plame Wilson’s identity to Miller. Bond says that while she is sure Libby denied discussing Plame Wilson’s CIA identity with then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see January 29, 2007), FBI notes of Libby’s testimony contain no record of such a denial. The notes say that he may have discussed it, but he couldn’t recall. “Adamantly might not be the perfect word,” Bond testifies. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/1/2007; Associated Press, 2/5/2007; FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]

Lewis Libby, second from left, and members of the press watch video of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s press briefing. [Source: Art Lien / NBC]In the Lewis Libby perjury trial, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald plays video excerpts from press briefings by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who fielded questions about the Valerie Plame Wilson CIA identity leak (see October 4, 2003 and October 7, 2003). Judge Reggie Walton has ruled that he does not grant credibility to charges by Libby’s defense team that Libby is being “scapegoated” by the White House to protect White House political strategist Karl Rove, and denies the defense’s attempt to suppress the videos. “There’s no evidence of an effort to throw [Libby] under the bus,” Fitzgerald argues to Walton, and he says he wants to show the videos to disprove Libby’s contention of scapegoating. However, Walton rules that because the press briefings were so emotionally charged (see September 29, 2003 and July 11, 2005), to allow the jury to hear them in their entirety would prejudice it against Libby. Instead, prosecutors read aloud the questions reporters asked McClellan and the jurors see only brief excerpts. The videos show McClellan assuring reporters that he had been assured Libby did not leak classified information, and promising that any White House official who did leak information would be summarily fired. [Washington Post, 2/2/2007; Associated Press, 2/2/2007; Los Angeles Times, 2/2/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]

Lewis Libby’s defense lawyers file a brief with the court arguing that they should be able to present evidence as to Libby’s state of mind during his tenure at the White House even if Libby does not testify on his own behalf. The legal team wants to use what some call a “memory defense”—an assertion that Libby’s workload at the White House was so stressful that he did not deliberately lie to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and to a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), but merely “misremembered” pertinent facts regarding his involvement in the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA official (see January 31, 2006). The lawyers argue that to exclude such evidence, regardless of Libby’s choice to testify or not, would violate his constitutional rights to a fair trial. The brief notes that no decision as to Libby’s testimony has yet been made. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/5/2007 ] Criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the progressive blog TalkLeft, notes that according to the defense argument, testifying would force Libby to choose between his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The brief also states, in a footnote, that while the lawyers had indicated it was “very likely” Libby would testify, no promises were made (see September 22, 2006). And the lawyers say they want to present three separate categories of classified, security-related evidence to prove Libby’s mental confusion: a government statement admitting relevant facts, testimony by members of Vice President Dic Cheney’s staff and perhaps Cheney himself, and some of Libby’s morning briefings. Merritt agrees with Libby’s lawyers in saying that Libby should be able to present some sort of memory defense without having to testify. “The prosecution has admitted a lot of evidence as to his state of mind,” she writes. “He should have the right to present circumstantial evidence refuting it.” She also believes the Libby lawyers are hesitant to put their client on the stand, and that they may be setting up an argument for an appeal if Libby is convicted. Former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith, writing for the progressive blog FireDogLake, observes that Libby’s strongest argument may be his contention that by testifying, he would void his Fifth Amendment rights. She disagrees with Libby’s intention “to introduce reams and reams of national security materials in an attempt to confuse the jury or to overwhelm them,” or to distract the jury from the fact that he and Cheney were determined to discredit administration critic Joseph Wilson. Merritt contends that Judge Reggie Walton should approve of the motion, while Smith argues for its dismissal. Both agree that it is highly risky for the Libby team not to have their client speak before the jury. [Jeralyn Merritt, 2/6/2007; Christy Hardin Smith, 2/6/2007]

Jurors in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial (see January 16-23, 2007) hear eight hours of audio recordings of Libby’s 2003 and 2004 grand jury testimony (see March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004, and February 1-5, 2007). Three of the five perjury and obstruction of justice charges stem from Libby’s testimony before that grand jury. In the tapes, Libby acknowledges to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he understands a person who does not tell the truth to a grand jury can be charged with perjury. Libby’s memory was extraordinarily poor during his testimony; he told jurors in 2004 that he could recall little of his conversations with his then-boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, about former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Libby did recall Cheney telling him that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA officer, but said Cheney told him in “sort of an offhand manner, as a curiosity.” Presiding judge Reggie Walton rules that once the jury is finished with them, the tapes will be released to the media. Libby’s lawyers had argued that releasing them would “seriously threaten” his right to a fair trial. [CBS News, 1/25/2007; FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Jurors will hear more grand jury testimony the next day (see February 6, 2007).

Author and media observer Eric Boehlert, writing for the progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters, criticizes the majority of mainstream news reporters and publications for failing to report aggressively and even accurately on the Plame Wilson leak investigation. Boehlert writes that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald “has consistently shown more interest—and determination—in uncovering the facts of the Plame scandal than most Beltway journalists, including the often somnambulant DC newsroom of the New York Times. Indeed, for long stretches, the special counsel easily supplanted the timid DC press corps and become the fact-finder of record for the Plame story. It was Fitzgerald and his team of G-men—not journalists—who were running down leads, asking tough questions, and, in the end, helping inform the American people about possible criminal activity inside the White House.” While Fitzgerald had subpoena power, Boehlert admits, reporters often had inside information that they consistently failed to reveal, instead “dutifully keeping their heads down and doing their best to make sure the details never got out about the White House’s obsession with discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV by outing his undercover CIA wife, Valerie Plame” Wilson. Boehlert writes that if not for Fitzgerald’s dogged investigation, the entire leak story would have “simply faded into oblivion like so many other disturbing suggestions of Bush administration misdeeds. And it would have faded away because lots of high-profile journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and NBC wanted it to.” 'Watergate in Reverse' - “In a sense, it was Watergate in reverse,” Boehlert writes. “Instead of digging for the truth, lots of journalists tried to bury it. The sad fact remains the press was deeply involved in the cover-up, as journalists reported White House denials regarding the Plame leak despite the fact scores of them received the leak and knew the White House was spreading rampant misinformation about an unfolding criminal case.” Going Along to Avoid Angering White House - Boehlert believes that in the early days of the investigation, most Washington reporters agreed with President Bush, who said that it was unlikely the leaker’s identity would ever be unearthed (see October 7, 2003). Historically, leak investigations rarely produced the leaker. “So if the leakers weren’t going to be found out, what was the point of reporters going public with their information and angering a then-popular White House that had already established a habit for making life professionally unpleasant for reporters who pressed too hard?” Boehlert asks. Now, of course, the press is pursuing the Libby trial for all it’s worth. Early Instances of Misleading - Boehlert notes a number of instances where media figures either deliberately concealed information they had about who leaked Plame Wilson’s name, or were transparently disingenuous about speculating on the leaker’s identity. ABC reported in July 2005 that “it’s been unknown who told reporters the identity of Valerie Plame” for two years, an assertion Boehlert calls “silly” (see October 3, 2003). The following Washington journalists all had inside information to one extent or another about the case long before the summer of 2005: Robert Novak (see July 8, 2003), Tim Russert (see August 7, 2004), Andrea Mitchell (see July 20, 2003 and July 21, 2003), David Gregory (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), Chris Matthews (see July 21, 2003), Matthew Cooper (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), Michael Duffy (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), John Dickerson (see February 7, 2006), Viveca Novak (see March 1, 2004), Judith Miller (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), and Bob Woodward (see June 13, 2003). Had they come forward with the information they had, the identity of the various White House leakers would have been revealed much sooner. “[B]ut none of them did,” Boehlert writes. “Instead, at times there was an unspoken race away from the Bush scandal, a collective retreat that’s likely unprecedented in modern-day Beltway journalism.” Cheerleading for Bush - Many journalists without inside information were openly cheering for the Bush administration and against the investigation, Boehlert contends. They included the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof (see October 1, 2003 and October 25, 2005), Newsweek’s Evan Thomas (see October 1, 2003 and November 7, 2005), Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (see October 13, 2005 and January 30, 2007), fellow Post columnist Michael Kinsley (see October 28, 2005 and January 31, 2007), Slate editor Jacob Weisberg (see October 18, 2005), and Post columnist David Broder (see July 10, 2005 and September 7, 2006). Author and liberal blogger Marcy Wheeler, in her book on the Plame affair entitled Anatomy of Deceit, wrote that in her view, the media was attempting to “mak[e] the case that the press should retain exclusive judgment on the behavior of politicians, with no role for the courts.” Fighting to Stay Quiet during the Election Campaign - Many journalists tried, and succeeded, to keep the story quiet during the 2004 presidential election campaign. Matthew Cooper refused to testify before Fitzgerald’s grand jury until mid-2005, when he asked for and was granted a waiver from Karl Rove to reveal him as the source of his information that Plame Wilson was a CIA agent (see July 13, 2005). Boehlert notes that Cooper’s bosses at Time decided to fight the subpoena in part because they “were concerned about becoming part of such an explosive story in an election year” (see July 6, 2005). Russert, NBC Withheld Information from Public - Russert also withheld information from Fitzgerald, and the American public, until well after the November 2004 election. Boehlert notes that Russert “enjoyed a very close working relationship with Libby’s boss, Cheney,” and “chose to remain silent regarding central facts.” Russert could have revealed that in the summer of 2004, he had told Fitzgerald of his conversation with Libby during the summer of 2003 (see August 7, 2004). Libby had perjured himself by telling Fitzgerald that Russert had told him of Plame Wilson’s CIA status, when in reality, the reverse was true (see March 24, 2004). Instead, Russert testified that he and Libby never discussed Plame Wilson’s identity during that conversation, or at any other time. But neither Russert nor his employer, NBC News, admitted that to the public, instead merely saying that Libby did not reveal Plame Wilson’s identity to Russert (see August 7, 2004). Boehlert writes, “But why, in the name of transparency, didn’t the network issue a statement that made clear Russert and Libby never even discussed Plame?” Woodward's Involvement - Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, an icon of investigative reporting (see June 15, 1974), told various television audiences that Fitzgerald’s investigation was “disgraceful” and called Fitzgerald a “junkyard prosecutor” (see October 27, 2005), and said the leak had not harmed the CIA (see July 14, 2003, July 21, 2003, September 27, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, and October 23-24, 2003). Woodward predicted that when “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great” (see July 7, 2005). While Woodward was disparaging the investigation (see July 11, 2005, July 17, 2005, and October 28, 2005), he was failing to reveal that he himself had been the recipient of a leak about Plame Wilson’s identity years before (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, and June 27, 2003), which, Boehlert notes, “meant Woodward, the former sleuth, had been sitting been sitting on a sizeable scoop for more than two years.” Boehlert continues: “If at any point prior to the Libby indictments Woodward had come forward with his information, it would have been politically devastating for the White House. Instead, Woodward remained mum about the facts while publicly mocking Fitzgerald’s investigation.” Conclusion - Boehlert concludes: “Regardless of the outcome from the Libby perjury case, the trial itself will be remembered for pulling back the curtain on the Bush White House as it frantically tried to cover up its intentional effort to mislead the nation to war. Sadly, the trial will also serve as a touchstone for how the Beltway press corps completely lost its way during the Bush years and became afraid of the facts—and the consequences of reporting them.” [Media Matters, 2/6/2007]

Jurors in the Lewis Libby perjury trial (see January 16-23, 2007) hear six more hours of audio recordings of Libby’s 2003 and 2004 grand jury testimony (see March 5, 2004, March 24, 2004, and February 1-5, 2007). They spent all of yesterday listening to Libby’s testimony from the same audio recordings (see February 5, 2007). Today, jurors hear Libby acknowledging that he originally learned of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from his then-boss, Vice President Dick Cheney (see (June 12, 2003)). But, Libby said, he “forgot” that he had learned that information from Cheney, so when he heard it a second time from NBC News bureau chief Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003), he thought that he was hearing it for the first time. According to Libby, Russert asked him in July 2003, “Did you know that [former] ambassador [Joseph] Wilson’s wife works at the CIA?” Libby added: “And I was a little taken aback by that. I remember being taken aback by it.” Libby’s testimony conflicts with testimony given by many other witnesses, who say Libby discussed Wilson’s wife with them before the stated date of the Libby-Russert conversation. In his grand jury testimony, Russert said he didn’t recall Plame Wilson’s name coming up at all in his conversation with Libby (see February 7-8, 2007). In other portions of the audio tapes, Libby is heard repeatedly claiming that he cannot remember details of conversations other officials have said they had with him. [FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; FireDogLake, 2/6/2007; FireDogLake, 2/6/2007; FireDogLake, 2/6/2007; FireDogLake, 2/6/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says of Libby’s claimed memory lapse, “You can’t be startled about something on Thursday [July 10] that you told other people about on Monday [July 7] and Tuesday [July 8].” Fitzgerald is referring to Libby’s disclosure of Plame Wilson’s identity to reporter Judith Miller (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). [FireDogLake, 2/5/2007; National Journal, 2/19/2007] Jurors are able to follow the audiotapes with printed copies of Libby’s testimony as well as from a display on a large television monitor. [CBS News, 1/25/2007; FireDogLake, 2/5/2007] The grand jury replay will conclude tomorrow morning (see February 7, 2007).

The prosecution in the Lewis Libby trial concludes its presentation of Libby’s grand jury testimony from 2004 (see February 5, 2007 and February 6, 2007). The day’s proceedings begin with lengthy arguments between the lawyers over the upcoming testimony of NBC reporter Tim Russert (see February 7-8, 2007); once the arguments are concluded, the jurors listen to the remaining audiotapes of Libby’s testimony. At the end of the grand jury testimony, Libby is reduced to claiming, over and over again, his failure to recall the events in question. [FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007]

Artist’s sketch of Tim Russert testifying in the Libby trial. [Source: Art Lien / CourtArtist (.com)]NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert testifies in the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007), following almost three days of videotaped testimony from Libby (see February 7, 2007). Russert’s testimony is virtually identical to statements he previously made to an FBI investigator (see November 24, 2003) and to the Plame Wilson grand jury (see August 7, 2004). Never Discussed Plame Wilson with Libby - Questioned by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Russert contradicts Libby’s 2004 testimony, where Libby said he learned of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from Russert in July 2003 (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Russert says that in July 2003 he spoke with Libby, who complained about MSNBC news anchor Chris Matthews’s coverage of the Iraq war (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Libby testified that at the end of that phone call, Russert broached the subject of war critic Joseph Wilson and told him that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, saying, “[A]ll the reporters know” that Plame Wilson is a CIA officer. Russert tells the jury: “That would be impossible. I didn’t know who that person was until several days later.” He adds: “If he had told me [Plame Wilson’s identity], I would have asked him how he knew that, why he knew that, what is the relevance of that. And since [it was] a national security issue, my superiors [would] try to pursue it.” Cross-Examination Focuses on Faulty Recollections - Libby’s lawyer, Theodore Wells, is skeptical of Russert’s denial. “You have the chief of staff of the vice president of the United States on the telephone and you don’t ask him one question about it?” he asks. “As a newsperson who’s known for being aggressive and going after the facts, you wouldn’t have asked him about the biggest stories in the world that week?” Russert replies, “What happened is exactly what I told you.” Wells cites a transcript of Russert’s initial testimony before the FBI, in which he said he could not rule out discussing Plame Wilson with Libby. Russert says he doesn’t believe that is what he told the FBI. Wells asks, “Did you disclose in the affidavit to the court that you had already disclosed the contents of your conversation with Mr. Libby?” Russert attempts to answer, saying, “As I’ve said, sir…” but Wells cuts him off, saying, “It’s a yes or no question.” Russert responds, “I’d like to answer it to the best of my ability.” Wells says: “This is a very simple question. Either it’s in the affidavit or it’s not. Did you disclose to the court that you had already communicated to the FBI the fact that you had communicated with Mr. Libby?” Russert answers, “No” (see Late February or Early March, 2004). Wells attempts to raise questions about Russert’s ethics and credibility, and implies that Russert wanted to see Libby face charges. In follow-up questioning, Fitzgerald asks Russert, “Did you take joy in Mr. Libby’s indictment?” Russert replies: “No, not at all. And I don’t take joy in being here” in the courtroom as a witness. During the second day of Russert’s testimony, defense lawyers ask why Russert told the FBI about his conversation with Libby, but said he would not testify if subpoenaed; Russert says he viewed the FBI conversation and the subpoena differently. During redirect, Fitzgerald notes that during Libby’s grand jury testimony, Libby claimed that he had indeed learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from his then-boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, but had forgotten about it, and when Russert told him about Plame Wilson’s CIA status, it was as if it were new information to him (see February 6, 2007). [FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; CNN, 2/8/2007; New York Times, 2/9/2007; Associated Press, 2/9/2007; MSNBC, 2/12/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] The Associated Press writes: “Wells wants to cast Russert as someone who cannot be believed, who publicly championed the sanctity of off-the-record conversations but privately revealed that information to investigators. Russert said he viewed the FBI conversation and testimony to prosecutors differently.” [Associated Press, 2/9/2007]Potential Mistrial Averted - The jurors are not supposed to read about the trial in the press or watch television coverage of it; resultingly, they are provided newspapers with the pertinent information scissored out. As the jurors enter the courtroom for Russert’s second day of testimony, Judge Reggie Walton notes that they were given newspapers with a Washington Post article, headlined “Tim Russert on the Uncomfortable Side of a Question,” unredacted. A juror brought the newspaper to the attention of the marshals immediately upon receipt of it, and no juror admits to having read it. Walton rules that no harm has been done, and a potential mistrial is averted. [FireDogLake, 2/7/2007]

The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin takes NBC bureau chief Tim Russert to task for “enabling” White House and other governmental officials. Froomkin is responding to Russert’s testimony in the Lewis Libby trial (see February 7-8, 2007); Russert told the court that whenever a governmental official calls him, their conversation is presumptively “off the record” unless he specifically asks permission to use a particular bit from the conversation. Froomkin asks the rhetorical question: “If you’re a journalist, and a very senior White House official calls you up on the phone, what do you do? Do you try to get the official to address issues of urgent concern so that you can then relate that information to the public?” Froomkin’s answer: “Not if you’re… Tim Russert.” Froomkin says of Russert’s practice: “That’s not reporting, that’s enabling. That’s how you treat your friends when you’re having an innocent chat, not the people you’re supposed to be holding accountable.” Russert, who Froomkin says is one of “the elite members of Washington’s press corps,” joins his fellows in seeming “more interested in protecting themselves and their cozy ‘sources’ than in informing the public.” Froomkin notes that in testimony from Cathie Martin, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former communications director, Cheney’s staff viewed going on Russert’s Meet the Press as a way to go public but “control [the] message” (see (July 11, 2003) and January 25-29, 2007). Froomkin writes, “Sure, there might be a tough question or two, but Russert could be counted on not to knock the veep off his talking points—and, in that way, give him just the sort of platform he was looking for.” Froomkin notes that after Russert’s testimony, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington told an interviewer: “This assumption that somehow any conversation with a government official is automatically assumed to be highly confidential… gives the sense to the average citizen that this is a kind of club, to which government officials and major news reporters belong. And that anything discussed between them is automatically off the record, no matter whether it is of public interest or not.” Froomkin also notes that media observer Eric Boehlert calls Russert and the Washington press corps “timid,” and quotes Boehlert as saying the reporters are leaving the tough investigative work to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald while they carp from the sidelines (see February 6, 2007). [Washington Post, 2/8/2007] Liberal blogger Duncan Black, who posts under the Internet moniker “Atrios,” responds to Froomkin’s article by writing: “I’ll be generous and say that as much as we’re all horrified by the generally ‘we’re all friends’ attitude of the media and the rest of official Washington, I’ll acknowledge that some of this is inevitable and I don’t think journalists should always be playing ‘gotcha.’ But we’re not talking about assuming stuff is off the record at social events, or something, we’re talking about assuming stuff is off the record, by default, even when it’s clear that Russert is in his role as a journalist. Journalism ceases to be about bringing truth to the public and becomes official court stenography. Russert only reports what people agree to let him report.… By essentially running administration press releases through a guy like Russert, they launders [sic] the information and give it the stamp of truth from a news guy that people inexplicably trust.” [Duncan Black, 2/8/2007]

Liberal author and blogger Arianna Huffington observes that in essence there are two trials going on in the Prettyman Courthouse in Washington: the “real” perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis Libby (see January 16-23, 2007) and the less defined “trial” of the Washington press corps, which appears to be infused with members who are more concerned with their “chummy relationship[s]” with government officials than in reporting the truth. Huffington singles out NBC bureau chief Tim Russert, whose recent testimony in the Libby trial “speaks volumes about the very chummy relationship that has developed between the Washington press corps and government officials, and reflects badly on Russert’s commitment to journalistic transparency and to keeping the public—and even NBC management—informed” (see February 7-8, 2007 and February 8, 2007). The media “trial,” Huffington writes, “will be decided by the court of public opinion. No one will go to jail, but credibility will, and should be, affected—and that will be a very significant byproduct of the Libby trial.” [Huffington Post, 2/8/2007]

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald rests the prosecution’s case against Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007) after 11 days of trial and 10 witnesses. [CBS News, 1/25/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007] The prosecution’s case ends with the introduction of a previously stipulated deposition by Debbie Heiden, Vice President Dick Cheney’s executive assistant. Heiden said in the deposition that she was assigned to search for documents on October 3, 2003, relating to the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see September 26, 2003), and found a document that is now filed as Government Exhibit 402. Cheney’s office turned over the document four days later. The document, an annotated copy of Joseph Wilson’s op-ed “What I Didn’t Find in Africa” (see July 6, 2003), contains Cheney’s handwritten notations (see May 14, 2006). The prosecution also submits a number of newspaper articles into evidence. [FireDogLake, 2/7/2007]

Judge Reggie Walton refuses to allow Lewis Libby’s lawyers to play clips from an MSNBC broadcast in an attempt to rebut testimony by NBC bureau chief Tim Russert (see February 7-8, 2007). Libby’s lawyers assert that Russert learned about covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson from NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell, an assertion Russert denies. Mitchell, appearing on the Don Imus radio and television show, said that she and other reporters knew Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, but later recanted that statement (see October 3, 2003). Libby’s defense team had asked to play the clip from the Imus show. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald opposes the request, calling it hearsay evidence and saying: “We might as well take ‘Wigmore on Evidence’ and replace it with ‘Imus on Evidence,’” referring to a classic treatise on evidentiary law. “There’s no Imus exception to the hearsay rule. This has no business in a federal court.” [FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; FireDogLake, 2/7/2007; Associated Press, 2/9/2007] The Libby team intends to put Mitchell on the stand; criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the progressive blog TalkLeft, does not believe Walton will allow Mitchell to testify, writing that her testimony amounts to nothing more than one speculation piled atop another. “Juries aren’t supposed to pile inference upon inference in arriving at a conclusion,” she writes. [Jeralyn Merritt, 2/11/2007] Mitchell will not testify (see February 12, 2007).

As the Libby legal team prepares to put on its defense, the New York Times publishes an admiring profile of Lewis Libby’s lead attorney, Theodore Wells. The headline calls Wells “tough but deft,” and introduces him as “a celebrated defense lawyer with a reputation for a sure and supple touch with criminal juries.” The profile, written by reporters Neil Lewis and David Johnston, is based on an interview with one of Wells’s former clients, former Agriculture Secretary Michael Espy. Wells successfully defended Espy against a 30-count indictment of accepting illegal gifts during his tenure in the Clinton administration. The profile also quotes Wells’s legal partner in the Espy case, Reid Weingarten, who says of Wells: “The real truth about Ted is that it’s not about the flash, the geniality, and the big smile. He is a prodigious worker. He loves facts. No one outworks him. No one.” Former federal prosecutor Andrew Luger, who faced Wells in 1991, says Wells is “able to navigate complex issues in a way that made them very understandable to a lay jury.… He was able to do something that not all trial lawyers can do. He can present himself as personally easygoing and yet be very commanding.” The profile notes Wells’s “tall and athletic bearing,” his “skill as a communicator” during his opening statement (see January 23, 2007), and his ability to “strik[e] notes of anger, incredulity, and wounded innocence on behalf of” Libby. The reporters compare him to prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, portraying the government’s chief lawyer in the trial as “methodical [and] unemotional.” The reporters also praise Wells’s partner in the trial, William Jeffress, citing Jeffress’s “clarinet-smooth drawl to suggest his disbelief of accounts of several of the prosecution witnesses he has cross-examined, among them Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter” (see January 30-31, 2007 and January 31, 2007). Towards the end of the profile, the reporters note that Wells was unsuccessful in at least one instance of attempting to slow the pace of the trial (see January 25-29, 2007). [New York Times, 2/10/2007]

New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Jim Rutenberg, writing for the Times-owned International Herald Tribune, observe that if Vice President Dick Cheney does choose to testify in the Lewis Libby trial, he may not bolster Libby’s defense as much as he may intend. The reporters write: “If he testifies, Cheney will bring to the jurors the awesome authority of his office and could attest to Libby’s character as policy adviser and family man, to his crushing workload and dedication to keeping the country safe. That could give extra heft to Libby’s defense against the charge that he lied to the FBI and grand jury: that he was so occupied with important matters of state, he did not accurately remember conversations from July 2003. But the first 10 days of testimony has already exposed some of the long-hidden workings of Cheney’s extraordinary vice presidency, revealing how deeply the vice president himself was engaged during 2003 in managing public relations as the administration’s case for war came under attack.” Court and legal observers believe that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will be respectful but probing, and will hold Cheney accountable for any misstatements or contradictions. The reporters write, “If Cheney makes a statement that conflicts with the public record—and nearly every witness so far has done so at least once—it could prove embarrassing for him and for the administration.” A former federal prosecutor who knows Fitzgerald says: “If Cheney said anything that’s contradicted in the record, though I think that’s unlikely, Pat will slam him. He’ll do it respectfully, but I have no doubt he’ll do it.” [International Herald Tribune, 2/11/2007]

Walter Pincus, at his desk at the Washington Post. [Source: PBS]The defense in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial opens its case by presenting a string of reporters who all deny learning of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby. The defense begins with the testimony of Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, who has reported on national security and intelligence issues for decades. Pincus testifies that he learned about Plame Wilson’s identity from White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, a claim Fleischer has denied (see July 7, 2003 and January 29, 2007); Libby claims he never discussed Plame Wilson with Fleischer (see 12:00 p.m. July 7, 2003). Pincus is questioned by defense lawyer William Jeffress. Pincus says he testified to the FBI in September 2004 (see September 15, 2004), not merely because Libby granted him a waiver releasing him from their confidentiality agreement, but because he understood that Libby wanted him to testify. In cross-examination, Fitzgerald confirms that Libby lied to Pincus. Libby, whom Pincus confirms was a source for a May 2003 article, told Pincus for that article that “an aide to Vice President Cheney” asked the CIA for more information about Iraqi WMDs, which led to the CIA’s dispatching former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see May 2003). In fact, Cheney himself asked the CIA for that information. Author Marcy Wheeler, writing for the progressive blog FireDogLake, writes, “So Libby lied to Pincus to distance Cheney from Wilson’s trip.” Pincus testifies that he did not write about Plame Wilson for the Post. [Associated Press, 2/12/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]

Judge Reggie Walton refuses to allow the defense in the Lewis Libby trial to have NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell testify. In October 2003, Mitchell told MSNBC talk show host Don Imus that she and other reporters knew Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA official, but she later retracted the statement (see October 3, 2003). Walton does not agree with defense lawyer Theodore Wells’s contention that Mitchell’s statement, even though later retracted, somehow impeaches the credibility of her NBC colleague Tim Russert, who testified last week that he did not tell Libby of Plame Wilson’s CIA status (see February 7-8, 2007). Debra Bonamici, a lawyer for the prosecution, tells the court: “The question to be asked is what purpose would be served by impeaching their witness? Defense intends to ask about an unrelated subject—what Libby said to Mitchell, we presume that defense would want her to be credible. This is a ruse to present the non-admissible testimony [referring to the defense’s previous attempts to play the videotape of Mitchell’s conversation with Imus—see February 8, 2007]. They’ve got no reason to impeach, they’re setting up a straw man so they can impeach.” Walton rules that the defense is asking the jury to speculate that reporters such as Mitchell and Russert knew Plame Wilson’s identity, then speculate that Libby learned about Plame Wilson from Russert, and thusly infer that Libby was telling the truth to investigators. “I think there’s a lot of mischief that comes with that,” Walton says. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007]

Judge Reggie Walton rules that if Lewis Libby does not testify on his own behalf during his perjury and obstruction trial, the defense will be prohibited from presenting some of its evidence and arguments about his poor memory accounting for his lies and misstatements (see January 31, 2006 and January 24, 2007). The defense protests, leading some court observers to speculate that Libby may indeed not testify, though defense lawyers say no decision has yet been made as to his potential testimony. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; New York Sun, 2/13/2007; Washington Post, 2/13/2007; New York Times, 2/13/2007] Walton tells the defense that he feels he was misled, having been told all along that Libby would testify. “I didn’t think that was the landscape in which we were operating,” Walton says. The Washington Post calls Walton “irritated,” and the New York Times characterizes him as “annoyed.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; Washington Post, 2/13/2007; New York Times, 2/13/2007] Assistant prosecutor Debra Bonamici tells Walton that all of their filings regarding what classified information could be presented in open court were based on the assumption that Libby would testify: “The truth is we did assume that Libby was going to testify, and we did so because [the defense] asked us to assume that. Everything we did was based on the asumption and it would be fundamentally unfair to hold us to an agreement we made based on those assumptions.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007] Walton says that unless Libby testifies, he does not plan to allow the defense to argue in its closing that the Valerie Plame Wilson issue was less important to Libby than other matters. Only Libby can testify to how important those issues were to him, Walton says. But, the Times writes, Libby’s lawyers do not want to expose him to cross-examination by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. John Cline, one of Libby’s lawyers, says he hopes to introduce evidence of Libby’s busy schedule through testimony of his former top aide, John Hannah (see February 13, 2007). [Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; New York Times, 2/13/2007] Former federal prosecutor Joshua Berman, who has worked with both Fitzgerald and lead defense lawyer Theodore Wells, says Wells often waits until the last minute to decide which witnesses to call. “I’ve heard him say, ‘I often make the decision [to call a key witness] that morning,” Berman says, and adds that Wells has been “thinking about it every single morning and night since the trial began.” [USA Today, 2/12/2007]

New York Times reporter David Sanger, a veteran White House correspondent and the third reporter to testify for the defense in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial, testifies that he did not learn of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby. He testifies that he spoke to Libby for a lengthy July 2003 Times article about intelligence matters, and for a number of articles about Vice President Dick Cheney, Libby’s former boss. Sanger says he only learned about Plame Wilson’s CIA status by reading the Robert Novak column (see July 14, 2003). [USA Today, 2/12/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Libby did reveal classified information to Sanger, though not about Plame Wilson (see July 2, 2003).

In this courtoom sketch, Lewis Libby, at right, watches Robert Novak testify. [Source: Art Lien / NBC News]Conservative columnist Robert Novak, who publicly outed covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), testifies in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. He is questioned by lead defense attorney Theodore Wells. Like his colleague Bob Woodward (see February 12, 2007), Novak testifies that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from former State Department official Richard Armitage (see July 8, 2003). He tells the court that both Armitage and White House official Karl Rove have given him permission to disclose their identities as his sources, and to discuss the content of their conversations. Novak says his conversation with Armitage was understood to be entirely on background, and he did not take notes or record the conversation. “I assumed I could write what he said, but I wouldn’t be able to identify him,” he says. Novak testifies, “I had no help and no confirmation from Mr. Libby” concerning Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), and notes that he had already decided to write about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger when he spoke to Armitage (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). He goes on to call Wilson “obnoxious.” [USA Today, 2/12/2007; Associated Press, 2/12/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; National Review, 2/13/2007; Washington Post, 2/13/2007; New York Times, 2/13/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]

Former State Department Intelligence Bureau (INR) chief Carl Ford testifies for the defense in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Ford’s INR was one of the first governmental agencies to warn that the claims of Iraqi WMDs were not backed by solid evidence (see June 2, 2003), and Ford is the official who sent a memo indirectly identifying Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent to then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see July 7, 2003). The defense does little with Ford besides confirming the details of the memo, which primarily concerned Plame Wilson’s husband Joseph Wilson’s trip to Niger (see June 10, 2003 and July 20, 2005). [Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007]

Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler and Newsweek assistant managing editor Evan Thomas both testify, in brief stints, in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction case. Both testify that they did not learn of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Libby. Kessler says he focuses in his reporting on US foreign policy, and says he spoke twice to Libby in July 2003 without discussing Plame Wilson (see July 12, 2003). He says that as per instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s communications team, all of his conversations with Libby were considered “deep background,” and Libby is a confidential source. He says he learned of Plame Wilson’s covert status as a CIA official from reading Robert Novak’s column (see July 14, 2003). Thomas then testifies, identifying himself as primarily reporting on national security and political issues. He says he spoke to Libby perhaps a dozen times during the summer of 2003, without discussing Plame Wilson. [USA Today, 2/12/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Kessler and Thomas are the last of six journalists to testify for the defense in today’s proceedings (see February 12, 2007, February 12, 2007, February 12, 2007, and February 12, 2007). The Associated Press writes that the defense is trying to portray Libby as an administration scapegoat, being forced to take the blame for leaks made by other White House officials. [Associated Press, 2/12/2007]

The defense for accused perjurer Lewis “Scooter” Libby questions Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser, John Hannah, who says he worked very closely with Libby while Libby served as Cheney’s chief of staff. Hannah testifies that Libby has a poor memory (see January 31, 2006), telling defense lawyer John Cline, “On certain things Scooter had an awful memory.” Hannah also says that part of Libby’s job as chief of staff to Cheney was to “push back” on any criticism of the vice president such as that leveled by war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003). [New York Times, 2/13/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/13/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Hannah says of Libby’s memory, “It would often be the case where he was quite good at remembering ideas and concepts and very bad at figuring out how those ideas came to him.” Hannah portrays Libby’s typical workday as, in the words of the Associated Press, “breakneck,” with CIA briefings beginning a long and often hectic workday peppered with top-level meetings. “He was the key person talking about and helping advise the vice president on issues of homeland security,” Hannah testifies. Hannah’s testimony is key to the defense strategy, helping paint Libby as a man consumed with the duties of an intensely stressful job and therefore prone to make mistakes in recollection, especially about issues such as the identity of a CIA official whose husband is publicly criticizing the government. Hannah is also able to introduce some specifics about the national threats Libby worked to prevent, including terrorism and the problems posed by Iran and Pakistan, without subjecting Libby to cross-examination (see February 12, 2007). When Libby tried to remember things during his hectic workday, Hannah testifies, he often was unable to do so completely. [Associated Press, 2/13/2007; New York Times, 2/13/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/13/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/13/2007] Hannah’s attempt to paint Libby as overworked and mnemonically challenged is short-lived, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pins Hannah down in cross-examination. Fitzgerald asks Hannah if it would be accurate to say that because of Libby’s crushing work schedule during the week of July 6, 2003, the former chief of staff would have only spent time on things he considered important. “If he gave something an hour or two that week,” Fitzgerald asks, “it would be something Mr. Libby thought was important, right?” Hannah agrees. The jury is well aware that Libby spent two hours with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8 of that week (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). Both outed CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson and FireDogLake blogger Jane Hamsher will observe, “It was a Perry Mason moment.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 290-291; Associated Press, 2/13/2007; New York Times, 2/13/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/13/2007; Jane Hamsher, 2/13/2007] Former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal, the author of a recent book critical of the Bush administration, calls Hannah “Cheney’s stand-in, but without Cheney’s enormous potential liabilities that might be explored through cross-examination. Hannah’s role was to be the first-person witness to buttress Libby’s memory defense.” [Salon, 2/15/2007]

Based on Monday’s parade of reporters testifying that they were not told of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity by former White House official Lewis Libby (see February 12, 2007, February 12, 2007, February 12, 2007, February 12, 2007, and February 12, 2007), National Review columnist Byron York asks the same question Libby’s lawyers are asking during the trial: if Libby leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to reporters Judith Miller and Matt Cooper (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), why didn’t he leak it to the other reporters who testified? York writes: “Each was covering events in Washington during that intense period in mid-2003 when the Bush administration came under attack from former ambassador Joseph Wilson over its case for war in Iraq. Each interviewed Libby, then Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. And each heard nothing from Libby about Valerie Plame Wilson.… Did Cheney, who is portrayed in some scenarios as the mastermind of the leak, tell Libby to disclose Mrs. Wilson’s identity to Matt Cooper and not to Bob Woodward? To Judith Miller and not to Robert Novak?” These are the questions York says the defense hopes the jury will ask. York notes that Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus directly contradicted former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer’s claim that he did not tell Pincus of Plame Wilson’s identity, an exchange York says heavily damages Fleischer’s credibility. The defense contends that Libby may have learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from other, unnamed reporters; Libby, the defense says, later “misremembered” his source as being NBC’s Tim Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003 and February 7-8, 2007), who has contradicted Libby’s claim that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from him. York says that the most telling moments came during the testimony of Post reporter Bob Woodward, who played an audiotape of his conversation with then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who told him of Plame Wilson’s identity well before Libby exposed the CIA official to the press (see June 13, 2003). Armitage’s statement that “everyone knows it” refers, York writes, to Joseph Wilson being the anonymous former ambassador criticizing the Bush administration in the press, but York notes that some in the jury might take the reference to mean that “everyone knows” of Plame Wilson’s CIA status. “In any event, none of it had anything to do with Libby, except that Libby was not the one leaking,” York concludes. [National Review, 2/13/2007]

Jill Abramson (left) testifies under questioning by defense counsel William Jeffress, as lawyers look on. [Source: Art Lien / Court Artist (.com)]New York Times managing editor Jill Abramson testifies for the defense in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Abramson, who served as one of former Times reporter Judith Miller’s supervisors, says that she cannot confirm elements of Miller’s testimony (see January 30-31, 2007 and January 31, 2007). Miller told the court that after speaking with Libby (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) , she went to Abramson and suggested that the Times look into the question of whether Valerie Plame Wilson sent her husband, Joseph Wilson, on a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). Defense attorney William Jeffress asks, “Did Judith Miller come to you to recommend the New York Times pursue a story about whether Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA?” Abramson replies, “I have no recollection of such a conversation.” [Associated Press, 2/13/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/13/2007] Abramson, who testifies for less than five minutes, says, “It’s possible I occasionally tuned her out,” and reiterates she has no memory of speaking to Miller about Plame Wilson. [New York Times, 2/13/2007]

Neoconservative John Podhoretz, who has penned a number of columns in defense of former White House official Lewis Libby and repeatedly demanded that all charges against him be dropped (see November 18, 2005, April 9, 2006, and Late August-Early September, 2006), calls the defense decision not to have Libby testify in his own defense (see February 13-14, 2007) “a risky… tactic.” Podhoretz terms Libby’s efforts to avoid a guilty verdict “fighting for his freedom,” says the defense made the best decision it could “under the restrictions laid down by Judge Reggie Walton,” and quickly moves to question prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s ability to paint Libby as guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. Podhoretz implicitly concedes that Libby may well have leaked Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity to the press, but concludes that “nothing came of it.” Podhoretz says that given the events of the trial, it is unlikely that Libby will win a 12-0 vote in the jury and be acquitted; instead, he believes, the defense is now going for a hung jury. “Can Libby prevail?” he writes. “It’s easy to see how a few jurors at least might decide that they’ve just been subjected to a nonsense case that should be thrown into the garbage. But all 12 jurors siding with Libby? That’s a little like trying to fill an inside straight.” Podhoretz concludes by asking, “At which point, the question will be: Will prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald fold up his tent or is he going to devote more time and resources trying to destroy my friend Scooter Libby’s life by putting him on trial a second time?” [New York Post, 2/14/2007]

Criminal defense lawyer Jeralyn Merritt, writing for the liberal Huffington Post, says that she understands why the Lewis Libby defense team chose not to put either Libby or his former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, on the witness stand (see February 13-14, 2007). Libby, she writes, “is not required to prove he didn’t lie or obstruct justice. All he has to do is raise a reasonable doubt in the mind of the jurors that he did.” Merritt writes that in her opinion, the Libby team made a “serious misstep” at the beginning of the trial, when instead of merely focusing on the memory lapses of the various government witnesses—“every fact witness had them,” she notes—it chose to argue that the Bush administration “threw Libby under the bus to save Karl Rove” (see January 23, 2007) and NBC reporter Tim Russert, the prosecution’s star witness, “was biased against Libby” (see February 7-8, 2007). “They didn’t establish either one,” Merritt writes. Merritt believes the defense has a good chance at establishing reasonable doubt in at least some jurors’ minds about Libby’s intention to lie as opposed to merely having memory difficulties (see January 31, 2006). She writes: “No one on this jury is going to buy Libby as victim, although they may conclude he was no more mistaken than any other witness. Once the jurors try to figure out motive, even though it’s not a necessary element of the charged crimes, I call a draw.” As for Cheney, Merritt speculates that the defense lawyers used focus groups to decide his effectiveness, writing, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the focus groups found Cheney to be such a polarizing figure that Team Libby concluded that any good Cheney would do for Libby on substance would be completely overtaken by the jury’s loathing for him personally.” [Huffington Post, 2/14/2007]

With one exception, the jury comes to the courtroom wearing red Valentine’s Day T-shirts. [Source: Art Lien / Court Artist (.com)]The defense in the Lewis Libby trial (see January 16-23, 2007) rests after a speech by defense attorney John Cline, who tells jurors about Libby’s briefings on terrorist threats, bomb scares, insurgent attacks, and other issues. [ABC News, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007]Jury Intends to 'Act Independently' - In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, the jurors all enter the courtroom wearing identical red shirts with white hearts on the chests (one juror, an art historian and former museum curator, is not so attired). Juror 1432, whose name is not available to the press, stands up and says to Judge Reggie Walson, “We wanted to express our appreciation to you for our comfort and our safety thanks to the marshals.” The juror then adds: “This is where our unity ends.… We are committed to act independently… and base our decision on an independent basis.” Judge Reggie Walton calls the jurors “conscientious” and thanks them for their service. [ABC News, 2/14/2007; Associated Press, 2/14/2007; New York Sun, 2/15/2007] Court artist Art Lien predicts that the one juror who refuses to wear the red T-shirt will “surely [be] the likely holdout when it comes to a verdict.” [Art Lien, 2/14/2007]Judge Denies Request to Recall Reporter - Walton denies a defense request to recall NBC reporter Tim Russert (see February 7-8, 2007). When Russert, who has a law degree, testified for the prosecution, he said he did not know that a witness could have a lawyer present during his testimony before prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see November 24, 2003) and August 7, 2004). The defense has three video clips from Russert’s broadcasts during the investigation of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair that indicate he did know witnesses could have lawyers present. Russert was not forced to testify before the grand jury (see August 9, 2004), and the defense argues that he was given favorable treatment by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Had Walton allowed the clips into evidence, he would have allowed the defense to recall Russert to explain the inconsistencies. “It does touch on his credibility,” Walton says. “His credibility, it seems to me, is crucial to this case. He’s probably, if not the most important, one of the most important witnesses.” Lead defense attorney Theodore Wells also argues that Russert misrepresented himself during the investigation, saying, “He went around the country telling people he was this great protector of the First Amendment,” when in fact he had cooperated with the probe. “It was totally kept out of the public record and Mr. Russert took great advantage of that.” But Walton eventually agrees with Fitzgerald, who says Libby’s attorneys already had five hours of cross-examination with Russert after 15 minutes of testimony, and because they were apparently unsuccessful in shaking his credibility, they want a “do over.” Fitzgerald says it does not matter to the case what Russert knew about grand jury procedure, and therefore he should not be recalled. Walton agrees, saying, “It’s a totally, wholly collateral matter.” [Associated Press, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007; New York Sun, 2/15/2007]Denies Request to Admit Classified Evidence - Walton also reiterates his refusal to allow Libby’s former CIA briefers to testify on his behalf (see February 13-14, 2007). Walton says he had decided to allow the defense to enter a large number of classified documents into evidence to prove Libby’s daily workload and bolster his “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006) because he understood Libby would testify in court and subject himself to cross-examination by the prosecution; since Libby is declining to testify (see February 13-14, 2007), Walton rules he will not allow the material to be entered into evidence. “This seeks to get Mr. Libby’s statement [that he did not lie about his knowledge of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status, he merely “misremembered” it when testifying to the FBI and the grand jury] in through the back door without opening him up to cross-examination.… I just don’t buy that, counsel. I don’t think you can play coy by suggesting Mr. Libby is going to testify” and then hold the government to the deal without putting Libby on the stand. “It was absolutely understood from everything that was said to me that Mr. Libby was going to testify.” Defense lawyers should not be able to use the pretrial process for handling classified information to force disclosures based on a particular defense and then use that information in a different way, Walton says. “It’s too much of a game now. This is supposed to be about finding the truth. I won’t permit it.” The defense protests, saying the decision violates Libby’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. Walton shakes his head in refusal and says, “If I get reversed [on appeal] on this one, maybe I have to hang up my spurs.” [ABC News, 2/14/2007; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/14/2007; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007; New York Sun, 2/15/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]Stipulation Read into Evidence - Before the defense rests, the lawyers read a stipulation (a statement of fact agreed to by both sides) from former FBI agent John Eckenrode, who led the FBI’s initial leak investigation (see September 26, 2003). Eckenrode’s statement focuses on a report he wrote concerning two occasions of his speaking to Russert about the leak (see November 24, 2003 and August 7, 2004). Russert testified during the trial that Eckenrode had contacted him to discuss statements in which Libby said he had learned about Plame Wilson from Russert (see February 7-8, 2007). Eckenrode’s statement says Russert told him he had one or possibly two conversations with Libby on or around July 10, 2003, but couldn’t remember all the details. Eckenrode stipulates that Russert “[d]oes not recall saying anything about the wife of Ambassador Wilson.… Although he could not rule out the possibility he had such an exchange, Russert was at a loss to remember it.” The defense hopes this statement helps bolster Libby’s “memory defense” (see January 31, 2006). [ABC News, 2/14/2007]Testimony Phase Concludes - Fitzgerald does not call rebuttal witnesses, merely reading a brief rebuttal statement noting that Plame Wilson had worked at the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD) at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Walton then tells the jury, “All of the evidence has now been presented in this case.” The defense rests its case after only two days of witness testimony over three days, whereas the prosecution’s case spanned 11 days. [CBS News, 1/25/2007; ABC News, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007]Defense Lawyer Says Decision for Libby, Cheney Not to Testify Was His Own - After the jury is dismissed for the day, Wells tells the judge that it was his decision not to have either Libby or Vice President Dick Cheney testify (see February 13-14, 2007). “It was my recommendation,” he says. “I had the vice president on hold right up to the last minute. [H]e had his schedule open.” Wells says the defense began to reverse its initial intention to put Libby on the stand when the government turned over evidence that could undermine the testimony of some prosecution witnesses. He cites the grant of immunity to former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, another Plame Wilson identity leaker (see February 13, 2004). “The canvas and the landscape radically changed” after the defense learned more about the government witnesses, Wells says. The defense does not believe the prosecution has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Libby perjured himself before FBI investigators and a grand jury. Wells says: “There’s no box on the verdict sheet that says ‘innocent’ or ‘you didn’t tell the whole story.’ The box says ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty.’” Ultimately, Wells says, “We have to make decisions on our client’s best interest.” The trial now moves to closing arguments and then jury deliberations leading to a verdict. [ABC News, 2/14/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/14/2007; New York Sun, 2/15/2007]

Bob Graham (D-FL), the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that the White House found it almost impossible to refuse to appoint a special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see December 30, 2003) because of the Bush administration’s insistence on an aggressive investigation of a Congressional leak in 2002 (see June 19, 2002 and June 20, 2002). The strongest push for a leak investigation came from Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, Graham recalls: “They [the administration] would have had a certain exposure to hypocrisy if they hid behind executive privilege” when the Plame Wilson investigation began, or if they had fought the appointment of a special prosecutor, Graham says. “It made it politically untenable to avoid having a strong investigation, because they had demanded it of us. With us, they said we should call out the meanest, leanest dogs. The example that they set with us became the boomerang that came around and hit them.” Both Cheney and Libby are central suspects in the Plame Wilson outing, though no one has been charged with leaking her CIA status to the press. Cheney is known to have selectively leaked and declassified intelligence to bolster the administration’s case for war and later to defend against charges that he misrepresented prewar intelligence (see 7:35 a.m. July 8, 2003, (July 11, 2003), and July 12, 2003). And evidence points to the conclusion that Cheney ordered Libby to leak Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see July 7-8, 2003 and July 12, 2003). Senior Justice Department officials and Senate Democrats all pushed for Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself and name a special prosecutor. According to several senior Congressional staffers, Democrats made their case based in part on Cheney’s personal insistence that senators and their staffers be investigated over the NSA leak. [National Journal, 2/15/2007]

Former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), the former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says in an interview that the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak is one of the worst security breaches in US history. He also says that he believes Vice President Dick Cheney, and not just White House staffers such as Cheney’s former chief of staff Lewis Libby, was responsible for the leak. “It’s hard to believe that the chief of staff to the vice president was acting as a rogue agent,” Graham says. “What we have learned from the trial validates the suspicion that Libby was not just operating as a lone ranger. He was carrying out what the vice president wanted him to do, which was to besmirch Joe Wilson [Plame Wilson’s husband and a forceful critic of the Iraq war]. I think Libby has been a conspirator in one of the most reprehensible and damaging breaches of American security in modern history.” [National Journal, 2/15/2007]

Author and former Clinton administration adviser Sidney Blumenthal writes that months before the start of the Lewis Libby trial (see January 16-23, 2007), “one of Scooter Libby’s old mentors, a prominent Washington attorney and Republican with experience going back to the Watergate scandal and with intimate ties to neoconservatives, implored him repeatedly to stop covering up for Vice President Cheney and to cut a deal with the special prosecutor [Patrick Fitzgerald]. Yet another distinguished Washington lawyer and personal friend of Libby’s, privy to the mentor’s counsel, reinforced his urgent advice and offered to provide Libby with introductions to former prosecutors who might help guide him. But Libby rebuffed them. He refused to listen. He insisted on the trial.” Blumenthal does not name the two attorneys who allegedly urged Libby to make a deal with the prosecution. [Salon, 2/15/2007]

Columnist Byron York, writing for the conservative publication National Review, explains to readers why neither former White House official Lewis Libby nor Vice President Dick Cheney testified during Libby’s trial on perjury and obstruction charges (see February 13-14, 2007). York says that once the decision was made for Libby not to testify, there was no reason for Cheney to testify. “The vice president would likely have testified about Libby’s state of mind in May, June, and July of 2003, when the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq was under attack by former ambassador Joseph Wilson,” York writes. “The Libby defense has maintained that he, Libby, was tremendously busy at the time and might well have forgotten about the particulars of how he learned, and then forgot, about the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson. With Libby not testifying, it followed that Cheney wouldn’t either.” York then addresses the decision to keep Libby off the witness stand. For York, the question was not whether the jury needed to hear Libby talk about his role in exposing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official, but whether the jury needed to hear it again, after listening to eight hours of Libby’s grand jury testimony (see February 5, 2007 and February 6, 2007). “[B]y the time Libby had to decide whether to testify,” York writes, “the jury had already heard a lot of Lewis Libby testifying.” It had also heard audio of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald quizzing Libby. York writes: “Libby’s defenders are betting that jurors took from those recordings an impression not only of the defendant but of the prosecutor. And the impression that Libby’s supporters hope jurors will have is that of a prosecutor trying too hard to find a crime where there was none.” What jurors did not hear during those hours of audio evidence, York notes, was Fitzgerald asking Libby about former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s leak of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see June 13, 2003). York concludes: “[T]he entirety of Fitzgerald’s grand jury questioning might leave jurors with a more nuanced impression: that of a prosecutor who had received faulty information, or incomplete information, from other witnesses and who looked to Libby—and not those who had omitted or failed to remember key acts during their testimony—as the suspected criminal. The grand jury tapes reveal a prosecutor who had had sand thrown in his eyes—to use Fitzgerald’s famous image—but it had not been thrown by Lewis Libby.” [National Review, 2/15/2007]

FireDogLake blogger Jane Hamsher, writing for her blog’s coverage of the Libby trial. [Source: Michael Temchine / New York Times]The New York Times publishes a profile of some of the bloggers covering the Lewis Libby trial. The article, by Times reporter Scott Shane, focuses on the team of six writers and researchers who work on a volunteer basis for FireDogLake (FDL), a liberal blog owned by movie producer and author Jane Hamsher. According to Shane, “FireDogLake has offered intensive trial coverage, using some six contributors in rotation,” including “a former prosecutor [Christy Hardin Smith], a current defense lawyer [Jeralyn Merritt, who also writes for her own blog, TalkLeft], a Ph.D. business consultant [Marcy Wheeler, who has written a book, Anatomy of Deceit, on the subject],” a blogger who has covered the issue since Valerie Plame Wilson’s outing (the pseudonymous “Swopa”), an acknowleged expert on the Iraq/Niger uranium claims (the pseudonymous “eRiposte”), and Hamsher, “all of whom lodge at a Washington apartment rented for the duration of the trial.” Their work is so intensive and the bloggers so well-versed in the intricacies of the trial and its surrounding issues that “[m]any mainstream journalists use [FDL’s live coverage] to check on the trial.” 'Coming of Age' for Bloggers - Shane writes: “For blogs, the Libby trial marks a courthouse coming of age. It is the first federal case for which independent bloggers have been given official credentials along with reporters from the traditional news media” (see Early January, 2007). Robert A. Cox of the Media Bloggers Association says, “My goal is to get judges to think of bloggers as citizen journalists who should get the same protections as other journalists get.” Left-leaning bloggers such as those from FDL routinely disparage Libby and other Bush administration members in their writings, Shane notes, while right-wing blogs covering the trial, such as American Thinker, have targeted prosecution witnesses such as Tim Russert (see February 7-8, 2007) for their criticism. Sheldon Snook, the court official in charge of the news media, says the decision to admit bloggers (five to 10 out of the 100 or so reporters present on busy trial days) has worked out well. Snook tells Shane, “It seems they can provide legal analysis and a level of detail that might not be of interest to the general public but certainly has an audience.” Shane observes that “the Libby trial bloggers are a throwback to a journalistic style of decades ago, when many reporters made no pretense of political neutrality. Compared with the sober, neutral drudges of the establishment press, the bloggers are class clowns and crusaders, satirists and scolds.” Wheeler says covering the trial alongside mainstream reporters has confirmed some of her skepticism about mainstream journalism. “It’s shown me the degree to which journalists work together to define the story,” she says. “[O]nce the narrative is set on a story, there’s no deviating from it.” Hamsher, who is battling breast cancer, says of blogging, “There’s a snarky, get-under-the-surface-of-things quality to it that’s really me.” (The Times later notes that the FDL and other bloggers are not the first to cover a federal trial; anti-tobacco activist Gene Borio covered the trial of the federal government’s lawsuit against the tobacco industry in 2004.) [Marcy Wheeler, 2/8/2007; New York Times, 2/15/2007]Countered 'Involved' Mainstream Media - In a contemporaneous interview with US News and World Report, Hamsher says of the mainstream coverage: “The media was having difficulty covering it because they were so involved in it. When the investigation started, Karl Rove’s attorney start[ed] putting out all this stuff. And every day the story would change and the blogosphere would document that. We had thousands of people showing up at our site and pointing out that the stories were never consistent. This story had so much information, and so many articles were written that it enabled the blogosphere to take in all of this information. And a cadre of professional people—not kids in their underwear—came together, compared notes, and developed a narrative of the story that was a pushback to the one that was being generated by the powers that be.… Our work on this particular topic has done a lot to defeat the notion that bloggers are fact free.” [Christy Hardin Smith, 2/15/2007] Salon’s progressive blogger Glenn Greenwald calls FDL’s trial coverage “intense, comprehensive, and superb.… [T]hey have produced coverage of this clearly significant event—one which has provided rare insight into the inner workings of the Beltway political and journalistic elite—that simply never is, and perhaps cannot be, matched by even our largest national media outlets.” He notes that even conservative news outlets such as the National Review have relied on FDL’s “liveblogging” of the trial for their reporting. [Salon, 2/15/2007] Shortly before the article comes out, Wheeler posts: “[T]he importance of having this story be told from a blogger’s perspective… is because there is so much about it the mainstream media cannot comfortably report. This story strikes at the core reasons why there are bloggers, why so many readers and writers have decided to invest their time in citizen driven media.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/8/2007]Presiding Judge Treats Bloggers as Professionals - Smith writes: “For the record, Judge Walton’s entire staff and all the folks at the courthouse have been wonderful throughout the entire process. From the first day forward, our whole team of bloggers were treated like every other professional covering the case—there was no distinction made, no patronizing attitude, just the same treatment for all of us. The amount of work that has gone into covering this case has been astronomical—the live blogging, the courtroom observations, the late night analysis, all the IMs [instant messages] and phone calls to cross-check details—you name it. But so worth it, still, to get the entire story out and not just blurbs and bits. And I cannot thank Judge Walton and his staff enough for giving us this opportunity. Truly.” Error in Reporting Corrected - Smith corrects an error in Shane’s reporting, noting that the Media Bloggers Association did not negotiate their media passes to gain admittance to the courtroom; that was done largely by Hamsher and the other FDL contributors, with assistance from author and fellow blogger Arianna Huffington. [Christy Hardin Smith, 2/15/2007]

Neoconservative John Podhoretz, writing for the New York Post’s editorial page, provides much of the information the defense had attempted unsuccessfully to raise during the Libby perjury trial about NBC reporter Tim Russert (see February 14, 2007). Podhoretz is referring to a stipulation the jury heard in final testimony, written by former FBI agent John Eckenrode, who interviewed Russert about his knowledge and potential involvement in the press exposure of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see November 24, 2003). In the interview, Russert said he did not speak to then-White House official Lewis Libby about Plame Wilson, and did not inform him of Plame Wilson’s CIA status, though he could not rule it out completely. Libby has told both the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and a grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) that he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from Russert (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Russert gave a deposition for that same grand jury (see August 7, 2004) and testified in Libby’s trial (see February 7-8, 2007) that he was sure he never spoke to Libby about Plame Wilson. Podhoretz writes: “The question is: How could Russert’s memory of his July 2003 conversation with Libby improve over time? If he wasn’t sure about the details in November 2003, how could he be so certain about them when testifying before a grand jury in 2005? And be even more certain testifying in court in 2007? Should the jury believe Russert’s words now—or take more account of his words in November 2003?” (Podhoretz errs in stating Russert gave the deposition in 2005; he gave that deposition in August 2004.) Podhoretz then advises the Libby defense lawyers to use the apparent contradiction in their closing arguments, which are coming up in a matter of days: “The stipulation will allow the defense to make a strong case in closing arguments next week that Russert’s initial description of the phone call needs to be taken very seriously. The prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. The stipulation casts doubt on Russert’s firm testimony.” Podhoretz believes that the issue can likely lead the jury to find that it cannot conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Libby perjured himself. Podhoretz concludes by misrepresenting Russert’s statement to Eckenrode: according to Podhoretz, all it took was a single phone call from the FBI for Russert to breach his professional ethics by revealing information about sources to Eckenrode, when in reality Russert told Eckenrode he did not learn of Plame Wilson’s identity from Libby, and battled the subpoena that compelled his testimony for the grand jury (see May 13-20, 2004, May 21, 2004, May 21, 2004, June 2004, June 2, 2004, and June 4, 2004). Podhoretz concludes, “[M]aybe, just maybe, Russert’s original words from November 2003—words he should never have spoken in the first place—will help get my friend Scooter out of his disgraceful mess.” [New York Post, 2/16/2007]

New York Sun reporter Josh Gerstein, in an analysis of the Lewis Libby trial, says the jury has a “plethora of reasons to acquit Libby” if it chooses to do so. Gerstein runs through the defense’s attempts to paint Libby as having tremendous memory problems (see February 13, 2007), and reminds readers that the memories of several government witnesses have been challenged by the defense (see January 23-24, 2007, January 24-25, 2007, January 24, 2007, January 25-29, 2007, January 29, 2007, January 30-31, 2007, January 31, 2007, February 1-5, 2007, February 7-8, 2007, February 13, 2007, and February 14, 2007). The defense has also offered three different theories to explain Libby’s prosecution, including his victimization by reporters, the CIA, and State Department, and White House officials attempting to protect deputy chief of staff Karl Rove. “You throw out as much as you can, hoping to get one juror,” says criminal defense lawyer Edward Hayes. “People like conspiracy theories.” Another defense lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, says: “It’s not inconceivable you could get a couple of jurors to say, ‘I don’t think he’s guilty because of memory. We all forget some things.’ A couple of jurors might not like that argument but might be persuaded by the suggestion he’s a sacrificial lamb and the administration is protecting Rove.” On the other hand, the defense’s “scattershot approach” might make the jury lose faith in its arguments. Branfman says: “I think you have to be very careful throwing defenses into a case. [Prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald is going to look at the number of defenses and comment on that. If something was made in their opening statement and they didn’t deliver, he has the right to comment on that.” And Hayes adds that the defense should be careful in suggesting that all the prosecution witnesses are “out to get” Libby: “What you can’t do is argue that every single witness is a bad person, lying, and out to hurt somebody. That’s just too much.” Most of the defense lawyers interviewed by Gerstein say they agree with the defense’s decision not to allow Libby to testify. Brafman agrees with an argument recently advanced by conservative columnist Byron York (see February 15, 2007), that the jury had already heard Libby’s testimony through audiotapes of his previous testimony to a grand jury (see February 5, 2007 and February 6, 2007), and to allow Libby to restate his earlier testimony and be cross-examined again would be “superfluous and perhaps reckless.” Gerstein concludes with praise from Brafman about lead defense attorney Theodore Wells. “Ted Wells is probably one of the most eloquent criminal defense lawyers in the United States. He’s a very charming man,” Brafman says. “He’ll probably deliver one of the best summations anyone has ever seen in any case.” [New York Sun, 2/16/2007]

Accuracy in Media logo. [Source: Accuracy in Media] (click image to enlarge)Roger Aronoff writes a press release about the Lewis Libby trial for the conservative media watchdog organization Accuracy in Media (AIM). Aronoff agrees with the defense’s decision not to allow Libby or Vice President Dick Cheney to testify (see February 13-14, 2007), calling the prosecution’s case “surprisingly thin” and noting that the defense’s goal is to get Libby acquitted, “not put on a show for [MSNBC news pundits] Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the left-wing blogs.” Aronoff castigates the mainstream news media for being too aggressive in reporting on the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak and the accusations of White House involvement, saying instead that the media was not only sloppy and imprecise in its reporting, but it should have been far more willing to present the government’s assertions that it was merely defending itself against unfounded allegations by “left-wing” war critic Joseph Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). Aronoff accepts the defense’s argument that Libby knew of Plame Wilson’s identity from Cheney, forgot it, and “relearned it” from NBC reporter Tim Russert, thereby rendering charges that he perjured himself in his FBI and grand jury testimonies groundless (see February 6, 2007). Aronoff attacks the journalists who testified about their contacts with Libby, and saves his heaviest criticisms for Russert, whom he says was “embarrassed” by what Aronoff says was the destruction of his credibility during cross-examination (see February 7-8, 2007). Aronoff concludes that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald “scapegoated” Libby because of Fitzgerald’s inability to bring charges against anyone for the actual leak of Plame Wilson’s identity, and expects Libby to be either acquitted or the jury to “hang,” causing a mistrial. But the trial was really about giving “left-wing” media critics such as Matthews “a vehicle to once again claim that the war was based on lies and misrepresentations. This trial was to be their chance to further undermine the Bush administration.” [Accuracy in Media, 2/16/2007]

Victoria Toensing, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, writes an op-ed for the Washington Post structured to imitate a legal indictment. Toensing asks if anyone can explain “why Scooter Libby is the only person on trial in the Valerie Plame [Wilson] leak investigation?” (The Washington Post, which publishes the op-ed, does not disclose Toensing’s own ties to Libby’s defense—see March 23, 2005. [Washington Post, 2/18/2007] Neither does it disclose the longtime personal relationship between Toensing, her husband Joseph DiGenova, and columnist Robert Novak, who outed Plame Wilson—see July 14, 2003. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 292] Neither does it disclose Toensing’s frequent criticisms of the investigation, including her position that the CIA and/or Joseph Wilson is responsible for outing Plame Wilson, and her belief that the entire trial is invalid (see November 2-9, 2005, November 3, 2005, November 7, 2005, and September 15, 2006).) Toensing dismisses the arguments laid out by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, lied to grand jurors (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) in order to keep secret a White House conspiracy to besmirch the reputation of White House critic Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003). Toensing calls the Libby indictment a “he said, she said” case based on conflicting testimony from other people. She proceeds to lay out her own “indictments”: Patrick Fitzgerald - for “ignoring the fact that there was no basis for a criminal investigation from the day he was appointed,” for “handling some witnesses with kid gloves and banging on others with a mallet,” for “engaging in past contretemps with certain individuals that might have influenced his pursuit of their liberty, and with misleading the public in a news conference because… well, just because.” Toensing argues that Fitzgerald should have known from the outset that Plame Wilson was never a covert agent, and if he didn’t, he could have merely asked the CIA. Toensing writes, “The law prohibiting disclosure of a covert agent’s identity requires that the person have a foreign assignment at the time or have had one within five years of the disclosure, that the government be taking affirmative steps to conceal the government relationship, and for the discloser to have actual knowledge of the covert status.” Toensing is grossly in error about Plame Wilson’s covert status (see Fall 1992 - 1996, Late 1990s-2001 and Possibly After, April 22, 1999, (July 11, 2003), Before July 14, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 30, 2003, September 30, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, January 9, 2006, February 13, 2006, and September 6, 2006). She also insinuates that Fitzgerald has two conflicts of interest: one in prosecuting Libby, as Fitzgerald investigated the Clinton-era pardon of financier Marc Rich, who was represented by Libby, and another in moving to jail reporter Judith Miller for refusing to provide evidence (see July 6, 2005) because Fitzgerald had subpoenaed Miller’s phone records for another, unrelated prosecution. Toensing questions Fitzgerald’s grant of immunity to former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see January 29, 2007), and complains that Fitzgerald allowed NBC News bureau chief Tim Russert to be interviewed with his lawyer present (see August 7, 2004), while columnist Robert Novak “was forced to testify before the grand jury without counsel present.” She concludes by accusing Fitzgerald of “violating prosecutorial ethics by discussing facts outside the indictment during his Oct. 28, 2005, news conference” (see October 28, 2005). The CIA - “for making a boilerplate criminal referral to cover its derriere.” The Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which Toensing helped negotiate in 1982, was never violated, she asserts, because Plame Wilson was never a covert agent. Instead of handling the issue internally, Toensing writes, the CIA passed the responsibility to the Justice Department by sending “a boiler-plate referral regarding a classified leak and not one addressing the elements of a covert officer’s disclosure.” Joseph Wilson - for “misleading the public about how he was sent to Niger, about the thrust of his March 2003 oral report of that trip, and about his wife’s CIA status, perhaps for the purpose of getting book and movie contracts.” Toensing writes that Wilson appeared on Meet the Press the same day as his op-ed was published in the New York Times, and told host Andrea Mitchell, “The Office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip there.” Toensing accepts Cheney’s denial of any involvement in Wilson’s trip and his denial that he was ever briefed on Wilson’s findings. Toensing argues that Wilson lied when he told other reporters that he was sent to Niger because of his “specific skill set” and his connections in the region (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), and not because his wife sent him (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). Toensing uses portions of the Senate Intelligence Committee report to bolster her claim (see June 11, 2003 and July 9, 2004). She also challenges Wilson’s assertions that his oral report on his trip was not classified (see March 4-5, 2002, (March 6, 2002), March 8, 2002, and March 5, 2002). And she accuses Wilson of “play[ing] coy” about his wife’s CIA status. The Media - for “hypocrisy in asserting that criminal law was applicable to this ‘leak’ and with misreporting facts to wage a political attack on an increasingly unpopular White House.” Major newspapers have “highfalutin’, well-paid” lawyers who should have known better than to let their clients call for special investigations into the Plame Wilson leak. The media has consistently “display[ed] their prejudice in this case.” Ari Fleischer - “because his testimony about conversations differs from reporters’ testimony, just as Libby’s does.” Fleischer testified under oath that he revealed Plame Wilson’s identity to two reporters, Time’s John Dickerson and NBC’s David Gregory (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Dickerson denies it and Gregory refuses to comment. Fleischer testified he did not tell the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus about Plame Wilson’s identity, contradicting Pincus’s own testimony that Fleischer did, indeed, ask repeatedly about the Wilsons (see January 29, 2007 and February 12, 2007). Because Fleischer “contradicted Pincus as materially as Libby contradicted Russert or Time’s Matthew Cooper,” he should be indicted as well. Instead, Fitzgerald gave Fleischer immunity in return for his testimony (see February 13, 2004). In that case, Toensing argues, Fitzgerald should indict Pincus insamuch as his testimony differs from Fleischer’s. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage - for not publicly revealing that he was perhaps the first to leak Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 13, 2003 and July 8, 2003). Armitage also discussed his FBI interview with his then-subordinate, Marc Grossman, the night before Grossman was due to meet with FBI investigators (see June 10, 2003). The US Justice Department - for “abdicating its legal and professional responsibility by passing the investigation off to a special counsel out of personal pique and reasons of ambition.” Both then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, could have asked the CIA to confirm Plame Wilson’s covert status, Toensing writes. She also insinuates that Comey acted improperly in giving the investigation to Fitzgerald, “a former colleague and one of his best friends.” [Washington Post, 2/18/2007]Refutation - Toensing’s arguments are refuted by former CIA agent Larry Johnson, who accuses Toensing of attempted jury tampering (see February 18, 2007).

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson, who trained with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003), pens an angry rebuttal of former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing’s critique of the Plame Wilson identity leak investigation (see February 18, 2007). Johnson accuses Toensing of “plumbing new depths of delusion and crazed fantasies,” notes that her op-ed should have been titled “I Am Ignorant of Basic Facts,” and excoriates the Washington Post for printing it. Johnson directly refutes two of Toensing’s strongest rejoinders: Plame Wilson was not a covert agent and Joseph Wilson misled the public about his trip to Niger, his report on his findings, and his public discussions of his wife’s CIA status. [Huffington Post, 2/18/2007] In 2007, Plame Wilson will add, “Toensing apparently hadn’t been following the trial very closely, or else she would have known that each of her ‘charges’ had been refuted in ample documentary and witness testimony.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 292]Plame Wilson's Covert Status - Johnson writes: “Valerie Plame was undercover until the day she was identified in Robert Novak’s column. I entered on duty with Valerie in September of 1985. Every single member of our class—which was comprised of case officers, analysts, scientists, and admin folks—were undercover. I was an analyst and Valerie was a case officer. Case officers work in the Directorate of Operations and work overseas recruiting spies and running clandestine operations. Although Valerie started out working under ‘official cover’—i.e., she declared she worked for the US government but in something innocuous, like the State Department—she later became a NOC aka non official cover officer. A NOC has no declared relationship with the United States government. These simple facts apparently are too complicated for someone of Ms. Toensing’s limited intellectual abilities.” Johnson also notes that he and his fellow CIA veterans Jim Marcinkowski, Brent Cavan, and Mike Grimaldi, accompanied by another CIA veteran who declined to be identified, appeared on ABC News in 2003 and verified Plame Wilson’s covert status (see October 22-24, 2003). And the facts introduced into evidence in the Libby trial show that at least four White House officials—Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003), Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003), and Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003 and July 8, 2003)—told journalists that Plame Wilson was a CIA agent. The result was not only Plame Wilson’s exposure as a former NOC agent but the exposure of her NOC cover company, Brewster Jennings (see October 3, 2003). Johnson writes, “That leak by the Bush administration ruined Valerie’s ability to continue working as a case officer and destroyed an international intelligence network.” [Huffington Post, 2/18/2007] Plame Wilson will dismiss Toensing’s claim about her covert status as “dead wrong,” and ask a simple question: since Toensing is not a CIA employee herself, how does she know what Plame Wilson’s status was? [Wilson, 2007, pp. 292]Joseph Wilson - Johnson notes that Toensing alleges an array of impropriety on Joseph Wilson’s part. Johnson counters that Toensing suffers from an apparent “reading disability.” The facts are plain: Vice President Dick Cheney asked his CIA briefer for information on the Iraq-Niger uranium claim in early February 2002 (see 2002-Early 2003 and (February 13, 2002)), and the CIA asked Wilson to investigate the matter a week later (see Shortly after February 13, 2002). Johnson writes: “Joe was a natural choice for the job. He had headed up the Africa desk at the National Security Council, he had served as an ambassador in West Africa, and had saved American lives from Saddam [Hussein] during the first Gulf War (see August 6, 1990 and September 20, 1990). He was not chosen by his wife, Valerie Plame. She only wrote a memo, at the behest of her boss in the Counterproliferation Divison of the Directorate of Operations, identifying Joe’s qualifications (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). And she was asked to inform her husband about the CIA’s interest in him going to Niger to help answer a request from Vice President Cheney, who wanted to know if there was any truth to reports that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger.… Valerie was not in the room when the decision was made nor was she in an administrative position with the clout to send her husband on such a mission.” This set of facts was confirmed by a memo from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR—see June 10, 2003) introduced during the trial. Johnson writes: “Too bad Ms. Toensing did not take time to read the CIA report produced from Mr. Wilson’s trip. He made it very clear in that report that Iraq had not purchased or negotiated the purchase of uranium.” [Huffington Post, 2/18/2007]Limitations of IIPA - Plame Wilson will write of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which Toensing helped negotiate in 1982, “If anything, her rantings pointed out the shortcomings of the bill she helped author—that is, the difficulty of prosecuting someone who had violated the law and passed along the covert identity of an operations officer to someone who did not have a security clearance.” Whether such an officer is currently overseas when their cover is blown is irrelevant, Plame Wilson will note; “[w]e use such things as alias passports, disguises, and other tradecraft secrets to do this. It’s called clandestine operations. Just as a general is still a general whether he or she is in the field or serving at the Pentagon, an operations officer by definition has responsibilities that don’t vanish depending on location.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 292]Jury Tampering? - Johnson writes that Toensing’s op-ed is so obviously another attempt to defend Libby, Cheney, and other White House officials, and to smear prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s and the Wilsons’ credibility, that it can legitimately be considered an attempt at jury tampering—an attempt to influence the jury deciding Libby’s guilt or innocence. Johnson asks: “Just days before the Libby jury retires to consider a verdict, why was Toensing allowed to publish an article rife with lies and misstated facts? Why does the paper that played a key role in exposing the tyranny of Richard Nixon now allow this shallow woman to smear prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald?” Public Service - According to Johnson, Fitzgerald has performed a public service in exposing the lies of Cheney, Libby, and others in the White House. “Cheney and Libby feared what the American people might do if they discovered they had been lied to about the case for war in Iraq. Now there is no doubt. They did lie and these lies have been exposed. Unfortunately, the Victoria Toensings of the world seem hell bent on perpetuating the lies and living in the delusional world that it is okay to out an undercover CIA officer during a time of war. While Toensing has the right to be wrong, we ought to ask why a paper with the reputation of the Washington Post is lowering its journalistic standards, ignoring ethics, and enabling the spread of lies. I think the owner of the Washington Post has some ‘splaining’ to do.” [Huffington Post, 2/18/2007]

Peter Zeidenberg (left) and Patrick Fitzgerald outside the courthouse during the Libby trial. [Source: Reuters / Jonathan Ernst]After some final sparring between opposing counsel, the prosecution makes its closing argument in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Assistant prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg opens with a lengthy presentation summing up the prosecution’s case against Libby. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007]Evidence Proves Libby Lied to FBI, Grand Jury - According to Zeidenberg, the evidence as presented shows that Libby lied to both the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) and the grand jury empaneled to investigate the Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). He lied about how he learned about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity, who he spoke to about it, and what he said when he talked to others about Plame Wilson. A number of witnesses, including NBC reporter Tim Russert (see February 7-8, 2007), testified about Libby’s discussions to them about Plame Wilson’s identity. Libby forgot nine separate conversations over a four-week period, Zeidenberg says, and invented two conversations that never happened, one with Russert and one with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. “That’s not a matter of forgetting or misremembering,” he says, “it’s lying.” No Evidence of White House 'Scapegoating' - The defense argued in its opening statement that Libby was being “scapegoated” by the White House to protect the president’s deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove (see January 23, 2007). No witness, either for the prosecution or the defense, referenced any such effort to scapegoat Libby. The defense may have promised evidence showing such a conspiracy to frame Libby, but, Zeidenberg says, “unfulfilled promises from counsel do not constitute evidence.” Libby Learned of Plame Wilson's Identity from Five Administration Officials in Three Days - Zeidenberg then walks the jury through the testimony as given by prosecution witnesses. Both former State Department official Marc Grossman (see January 23-24, 2007) and former CIA official Robert Grenier testified (see January 24, 2007) that Libby had badgered Grossman for information about former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson (see May 29, 2003), and Grossman not only told Libby about Wilson and his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, but that Wilson’s wife was a CIA official (see June 10, 2003 and 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003). Zeidenberg notes, “When Grossman told this to Libby, it was the fourth time, in two days, that Libby had been told about Wilson’s wife.” Libby had learned from Vice President Cheney that Wilson’s wife was a CIA official (see (June 12, 2003)). Two hours after Libby’s meeting with Grossman, Grenier told the jury that Libby had pulled him out of a meeting to discuss Wilson (see 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003). During that impromptu discussion, Grenier told Libby that Wilson’s wife was a CIA official. Libby then learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Cathie Martin, Cheney’s communications aide (see 5:25 p.m. June 10, 2003 and 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003). Martin, who testified for the prosecution (see January 25-29, 2007), learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from CIA press official Bill Harlow. Zeidenberg ticks off the officials who informed Libby of Plame Wilson’s CIA status: Cheney, Grenier, Martin, and Grossman. (Zeidenberg is as yet unaware that Libby had also heard from another State Department official, Frederick Fleitz, of Plame Wilson’s CIA status—see (June 11, 2003)). On June 14, Libby heard about Plame Wilson from another CIA official, briefer Craig Schmall (see 7:00 a.m. June 14, 2003), who has also testified for the prosecution (see January 24-25, 2007). Schmall’s testimony corroborates the testimony from Martin, Grossman, and Grenier, Zeidenberg asserts. Leaking Information to Judith Miller - On June 23, just over a week after learning Plame Wilson was a CIA official, Libby informed then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller of Plame Wilson’s CIA status (see June 23, 2003). Why? Zeidenberg asks. Because Libby wanted to discredit the CIA over what Libby saw as the agency’s failure to back the administration’s claims about Iraqi WMDs. Miller is the sixth person, Zeidenberg says, that Libby talked to about Plame Wilson. Miller also testified for the prosecution (see January 30-31, 2007). Told Press Secretary - On July 7, Libby told White House press secretary Ari Fleischer about Plame Wilson (see 12:00 p.m. July 7, 2003). Fleischer, under a grant of immunity from the prosecution, also testified (see January 29, 2007). By that point, Wilson had published his op-ed in the New York Times (see July 6, 2003), a column the administration considered to be highly damaging towards its credibility. Libby told Fleischer that the information about Plame Wilson was to be kept “hush hush.” However, Zeidenberg says, it is likely that Libby intended Fleischer to spread the information about Plame Wilson to other reporters, which in fact he did (see 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003). Fleischer is the seventh person that evidence shows Libby spoke to concerning Plame Wilson. Conferring with Cheney's Chief Counsel - The eighth person in this list is David Addington. At the time, Addington was Cheney’s chief counsel; after Libby stepped down over being indicted for perjury and obstruction (see October 28, 2005), Addington replaced him as Cheney’s chief of staff. Addington also testified for the prosecution (see January 30, 2007). Libby asked Addington if the president could legally declassify information at will, referring to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (NIE—see October 1, 2002). Libby planned on leaking NIE material to Miller on July 8 (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). Leaking Classified Material to Miller - As stated, Libby indeed leaked classified material to Miller, during their meeting at the St. Regis Hotel. The “declassification” was highly unusual; only Cheney, Libby, and President Bush knew of the declassification. Libby again told Miller of Plame Wilson’s CIA status, and this time told her, incorrectly, that Plame Wilson worked in the WINPAC (Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control) section of the agency. Cheney and Libby chose Miller, of all the reporters in the field, to leak the information to, Zeidenberg says; in her turn, Miller went to jail for almost three months rather than testify against Libby (see October 7, 2004). That fact damages her credibility as a prosecution witness. The Russert Claim - Zeidenberg then turns to NBC’s Russert, who also testified for the prosecution (see February 7-8, 2007). Zeidenberg notes that after lead defense attorney Theodore Wells initially asserted that neither Russert nor any other reporter testifying for the prosecution was lying under oath, Wells and other defense attorneys cross-examined Russert for over five hours trying to prove that he indeed did lie. Libby claimed repeatedly to the grand jury that Russert told him of Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see July 10 or 11, 2003), an assertion Russert has repeatedly denied. Zeidenberg plays an audiotape of Libby’s grand jury testimony featuring Libby’s assertion. Libby, Zeidenberg states, lied to the grand jury. Russert never made any such statement to Libby. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007] The defense tried to assert that Russert lied about his conversation with Libby because of some “bad blood” between the two. However, “evidence of [such a] feud is completely absent from the trial.” And if such a feud existed, why would Libby have chosen Russert to lie about before the jury? Such an assertion is merely a desperate attempt to discredit Russert, Zeidenberg says. Matthew Cooper - Zeidenberg then turns to former Time reporter Matthew Cooper, another recipient of a Libby leak about Plame Wilson (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). Cooper also testified for the prosecution (see January 31, 2007). When Libby told the grand jury that Cooper asked him about Plame Wilson being a CIA official, and Libby said he responded, “I don’t know if it’s true,” Libby lied to the jury. Zeidenberg plays the audiotape of Libby making the Cooper claim. Had Libby made such a statement, Cooper could not have used it as confirmation of his own reporting. Cooper did indeed use Libby as a source for a Time article (see July 17, 2003). Cooper’s testimony is corroborated by Martin’s recollection of the Libby-Cooper conversation. Zeidenberg says: “Martin was present. She never heard any of what you heard Libby just hear it. She never heard, ‘I don’t know if it’s true.’ If she had heard it, she would have said something, because she knew it was true.” FBI Agent Bond's Testimony - Zeidenberg briefly references testimony from FBI agent Deborah Bond (see February 1-5, 2007), who told the court that Libby may have discussed leaking Plame Wilson’s identity to the press. Bond’s testimony corroborates the prosecution’s assertion that Libby attempted to obscure where he learned of Plame Wilson’s identity. Grounds for Conviction - Zeidenberg reminds the jury of the three separate instances the prosecution says are Libby lies, then tells them if they find any one of the three statements to be actual lies, they can convict Libby of perjury. “You don’t have to find that all three were false beyond reasonable doubt,” he says. “You have to unanimously agree on any one.” Of the two false statements Libby is charged with making to investigators, the jury need only find one of them is truly false. Defense Assertions - Zeidenberg turns to Libby’s main defense, that he was so overwhelmed with important work as Cheney’s chief of staff that it is unreasonable to expect him to remember the details that he is accused of lying about (see January 31, 2006). Zeidenberg says the trial has elicited numerous instances of conversations Libby had, for example his conversation with Rove about Robert Novak (see July 8 or 9, 2003), that he remembered perfectly well. Zeidenberg then plays the relevant audiotape from the grand jury proceedings. Why is it, he asks, that Libby can remember that conversation so well, but consistently misremembered nine separate conversations he had about Plame Wilson? “When you consider Libby’s testimony, there’s a pattern of always forgetting about Wilson’s wife,” Zeidenberg says. Libby remembered details about Fleischer being a Miami Dolphins fan, but didn’t remember talking about Plame Wilson. He remembered talking about the NIE with Miller, but not Plame Wilson. He remembered talking about declassification with Addington, but not Wilson’s wife. Zeidenberg calls it a “convenient pattern,” augmented by Libby’s specific recollections about not discussing other issues, such as Cheney’s handwritten notes about Wilson’s op-ed (see July 7, 2003 or Shortly After). The defense also claims that Libby confused Russert with Novak; Zeidenberg puts up pictures of Russert and Novak side by side, and asks if it is credible to think that Libby made such a mistake. The entire “memory defense,” Zeidenberg says, is “not credible to believe. It’s ludicrous.” Libby was far too involved in the administration’s efforts to discredit Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). [Associated Press, 2/20/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]Motive to Lie - Zeidenberg addresses the idea of motive: why would Libby lie to the FBI and the grand jury, and why nine government witnesses would lie to the Libby jury. “Is it conceivable that all nine witnesses would make the same mistake in their memory?” he asks. Not likely. It is far more likely that Libby was motivated to lie because when he testified to FBI investigators, he knew there was an ongoing investigation into the Plame Wilson leak. He knew he had talked to Miller, Cooper, and Fleischer. He knew the FBI was looking for him. He knew from newspaper articles entered into evidence that the leak could have severely damaged Plame Wilson’s informant network and the Brewster Jennings front company (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006). Even Addington’s testimony, about Libby asking him about the legality of leaking classified information, is evidence of Libby’s anxiety over having disclosed such information. And Libby knew that such disclosure is a breach of his security clearance, not only risking his job, but prosecution as well. So when he is questioned by the FBI, he had a choice: tell the truth and take his chances with firing and prosecution for disclosing the identity of a covert agent, or lie about it. “And, ladies and gentlemen,” Zeidenberg says, “he took the second choice. He made up a story that he thought would cover it.” And when caught out, he claimed to have forgotten that he originally knew about Plame Wilson’s identity. Libby, Zeidenberg says, “made a gamble. He lied. Don’t you think the FBI and the grand jury and the American people are entitled to straight answers?” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; Murray Waas, 12/23/2008]No Conspiracy, Just a Lie - Zeidenberg concludes by telling the jury that there was no grand White House conspiracy to scapegoat Libby, nor was there an NBC conspiracy to smear him. The case is just about Libby lying to federal authorities. “When you consider all the evidence, the government has established that the defendant lied to the FBI, lied to the grand jury, and obstructed justice.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]

Defense lawyer Theodore Wells makes his closing argument to the jury, as Judge Reggie Walton looks on. [Source: Art Lien / Court Artist (.com)]Defense lawyer Theodore Wells makes his team’s closing argument in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial. Wells is following a two-hour closing argument by assistant prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg (see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007). [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; MSNBC, 2/21/2007]Indignation - Wells begins by saying he finds Zeidenberg’s arguments so incredible, he thinks he might be drunk. “[I]t sure sounded like I said a lot of things I could not deliver on,” he says. Court observer Marcy Wheeler, notating the arguments for the progressive blog FireDogLake, writes that while Zeidenberg came across as dispassionate and methodical, Wells’s tone is indignant and charged with emotion. In her book Fair Game, former CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson later describes Wells’s demeanor as “over the top, emotional… stalking the courtroom and changing the pitch and cadence of his voice like a seasoned Baptist preacher.” Wells says he will refrain from besmirching Zeidenberg’s character over some of the claims made in his argument, “because I don’t want to be personal.” Wells says that in the grand jury proceedings where Libby allegedly lied under oath (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), lawyers asked “the same question time after time after time,” causing Libby to stumble and misstate himself. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 293; Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]Revives Claim of Libby Being 'Scapegoated' - Wells denies claiming the existence of a White House conspiracy to “scapegoat” Libby in his opening statement (see January 23, 2007), saying he instead merely put into evidence the so-called “meat grinder” note from Vice President Dick Cheney that asserted it would be unfair to protect White House official Karl Rove and sacrifice Libby (see October 4, 2003). (Wells is misstating the contents of the note; it does not mention Rove at all.) Instead of lying, Wells says, Libby was “fight[ing] to get clear,” fighting to save his credibility after White House officials “blew him off.” 'He Said, She Said' - Wells asserts Libby’s complete innocence of all the charges brought against him, and says the entire body of evidence amounts to nothing more than a case of “he said, she said,” indicating that witnesses contradicted and disputed one another. Libby’s recollections, Wells says, are different from those of the reporters who testified for the prosecution. None of the charges pertain to Libby’s conversations with the White House officials who testified for the prosecution. The question hinges on whether Libby lied about his conversations with reporters Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper, and Robert Novak. One of the charges, hinging on Libby’s statements about his conversation with Miller, is no longer in contention. Of the conversation with Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), Wells says Libby was truthful when he told Cooper he “didn’t know” whether Plame Wilson was a CIA official or not. The evidence supports Libby’s position, Wells says. Tim Russert - Wells turns to NBC reporter Tim Russert, whom Libby claimed told him about Plame Wilson being a CIA official (see July 10 or 11, 2003). Russert either lied under oath, Wells says, or had a major memory lapse. Because of what Wells calls Russert’s contradictory testimony, that “in and of itself is reasonable doubt,” and grounds for acquittal. The prosecution is flatly wrong in its timeline of events. It is almost certain Russert read Robert Novak’s column naming Plame Wilson as a CIA official on July 11, 2003, after it was issued on the Associated Press wire (see July 11, 2003), and informed Libby of that fact during their conversation shortly thereafter. Perhaps Russert merely misremembered the dates or the events of his discussion with Libby, Wells says, but his testimony was wrong. “You cannot convict Mr. Libby solely on the word of this man,” he says. “It would just be fundamentally unfair.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; Associated Press, 2/20/2007]Presumed Innocent - Wells admonishes the jury not to forget that Libby is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Libby didn’t testify (see February 13-14, 2007) because the defense is not required to prove the innocence of the accused. The only question, Wells states, is whether Libby is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Did the government prove that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt? Wells says no. He then ticks off the five counts of criminal behavior that Libby is charged with, and links each one of them to either Russert, Cooper, or both. In the instances of both reporters, Wells says, there is doubt as to their recollections and therefore doubt as to whether Libby lied about his conversations with them. Wells calls it “madness… that someone would get charged with this.” If Libby misstated himself, Wells says, he did so with good intentions, with a good-faith effort to tell the truth. There was no “deliberate, purposeful intent to lie.” Wells walks the jury through his version of events, which he says proves Libby told the truth to the best of his ability throughout. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]Jeffress - William Jeffress, another defense attorney, takes up the defense’s closing argument after lunch. Wheeler writes that his demeanor is far calmer and reasonable than Wells’s emotional presentation. Jeffress says that common sense alone should lead the jury to find that Libby either told the truth as he understood it or merely misremembered as an honest mistake. The case, he says, is about memory first and foremost. Libby may have misremembered, Jeffress says. The reporters who testified may have misremembered. It is plausible to think that Libby learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status in June 2003, told some government officials, then in the crush of events, forgot about it until July, when he learned it again from Russert. Jeffress walks the jury through a timeline of how reporters learned of Plame Wilson’s identity from various government officials other than Libby, and says some of them, particularly former press secretary Ari Fleischer, may well have lied under oath to cover themselves (see January 29, 2007). Jeffress plays selections from Libby’s grand jury testimony to bolster his arguments about the various reporters learning of Plame Wilson’s identity from other officials. Motive to Lie? - Libby had no motive to lie, Jeffress asserts. He was never charged with violating the statutes covering the exposure of a covert intelligence agent (see May 10, 2006). No one has testified that they knew without a doubt that Plame Wilson was covert, though the prosecution implied it more than once. If newspaper articles claimed that Plame Wilson was covert, those articles cannot be taken as factual; many articles and op-eds asserted that Plame Wilson was never covert. “It remains far from clear that a law was violated.” And Libby had no way to know that Plame Wilson was herself covert. No one, not Libby or any other government official who exposed Plame Wilson’s identity, lost their job over exposing her CIA status. Judith Miller - Jeffress again turns to the issue of reporters’ credibility, beginning with Miller. Her testimony (see January 30-31, 2007) was, he says, marred with mistakes and failures of memory, even going so far as testifying, when she spoke to the grand jury, that she had not learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA status from Libby (see September 30, 2005), and then reversing that claim in subsequent testimony (see October 12, 2005). “Pretty amazing, a person testifying about this after not remembering for two years,” Jeffress observes. As Libby kept no notes of his conversations with Miller, he has only his word to refute her claims. Miller, Jeffress says, is an unreliable witness. Matthew Cooper - Jeffress, who is running out of time for his portion of the close, turns to Cooper. The difference between Libby’s recollection of events and Cooper’s is, Jeffress asserts, the difference that the government wants the jury to convict on three separate charges. Yet Cooper never wrote about Plame Wilson until after her status was made public. Libby did not serve as a source for his reporting (see July 17, 2003). And as with Miller, Cooper’s testimony proved his failure to keep accurate notes (see January 31, 2007). Cathie Martin - Jeffress moves quickly to address the testimony of Cathie Martin, then a communications aide to Cheney (see January 25-29, 2007). Martin testified that Libby’s version of his telephone conversation with Cooper was incorrect, and as she was there for the conversation, her testimony is accurate. However, Martin misremembered the number of calls made (two, not one) and did not hear Libby’s side of the conversation accurately. She had no way to know what Cooper was saying on the other end. Jeffress Concludes - Jeffress concludes by telling the jurors that they are the first people to examine the case “through the lens of a presumption of innocence.” The prosecution, he says, has not proven the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. “It’s not even close.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]Wells Continues - Theodore Wells once again addresses the jury. He has less than an hour to finish. He refers back to the “meat grinder” note from Cheney that proves, Wells says, Libby did not leak classified information (see June 27, 2003, July 2, 2003, 7:35 a.m. July 8, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Wells also revisits his claim that Libby was “left out to dry” by other White House officials. He disputes the timeline of events from the prosecution, again attacks the credibility of prosecution witnesses such as Russert and Fleischer, and calls the prosecution’s evidence “circumstantial” and unconvincing. He even disputes that Libby was involved in any effort to discredit Joseph Wilson, or that there even was an effort among White House officials to do so. As he reaches the end of his time, Wells’s demeanor once again begins to exhibit agitation and indignation, and he calls the idea that Libby, whom he says devoted himself to serving the Bush administration, committed a crime in that service “outrageous.” He revisits the contention that Libby’s memory was faulty and failed him at inopportune times, calls the courtroom a “laboratory of recollection,” and asks the jurors if they can emphathize with Libby’s forgetfulness. He reminds the jury of former Cheney aide John Hannah’s claims to that effect, and his testimony to Libby’s stressful job (see February 13, 2007). Libby, Wells says, deserves the “benefit of the doubt.” Wells admits that Libby “made mistakes” in his grand jury testimony, but those mistakes were honest “misrecollect[ions].” During his final minutes, Wells becomes emotional, breaking into tears and imploring the jurors not to sacrifice Libby because they might disapprove of the Bush administration or the war in Iraq. “This is a man with a wife and two children,” he says. “He is a good person. He’s been under my protection for the past month. I give him to you. Give him back! Give him back to me!” Wells sits down, sobbing. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; Associated Press, 2/20/2007; Washington Post, 2/21/2007; New York Sun, 2/21/2007]

Lead prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald delivers the rebuttal to the defense’s closing argument (see 11:00 a.m. February 20, 2007) in the final stage of the Lewis Libby perjury trial. Fitzgerald is transformed in his rebuttal, from the dispassionate, methodical presence he has displayed throughout the trial into a figure of outrage and scorn. He virtually leaps from his seat to rebut the defense’s argument, shouting: “Madness! Madness! Outrageous!” Tightening up somewhat, he tells the jury that in the defense’s characterization, “The government has brought a case about two witnesses, two phone calls. And they just want you to speculate. The defense wishes that were so. Saying it loudly, pounding the table, doesn’t change the facts. Let’s talk about the facts. Let’s get busy.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; Salon, 2/22/2007] Progressive blogger Jane Hamsher, who is present in the courtroom, describes Fitzgerald’s rebuttal as “lacerating and precise, speaking so quickly that the court reporter couldn’t catch up. His command of the material was a bit daunting, able to recall voluminous evidentiary document numbers simply by looking at some chart in his own brain.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 293; Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]Nine Versus One - The case is anything but a “he said, she said” situation, as defense attorney Theodore Wells characterized it during his portion of the closing argument. It is, Fitzgerald says, about nine different people having one version of events, and Libby alone with a markedly different version. Fitzgerald focuses on NBC reporter Tim Russert, whom the defense spent a lavish amount of time and attention attempting to discredit. Instead of Russert being such an impeachable witness, Fitzgerald says, “I’ll tell you that Russert alone can give you proof beyond reasonable doubt.” And even without Russert’s testimony, there is plenty of evidence to convict Libby of perjury and obstruction. Fitzgerald refutes Wells’s contention that all of the prosecution witnesses had faulty memories, telling the jury: “I submit you can’t believe that nine witnesses remembered 10 conversations exactly the same wrong way.… It’s not one on one. It’s not, ‘He said, she said.’ Nine witnesses can’t all misremember.” He addresses the defense’s contention that Valerie Plame Wilson was not important, calling that characterization a “myth” and stating that to the Bush administration, “she wasn’t a person, she was an argument, she was a fact to use against [her husband Joseph] Wilson.” Fitzgerald quickly runs through the prosecution’s structure of events as laid down by its current and former administration witnesses and even some defense witnesses. The documents entered into evidence corroborate the prosecution’s contention that to Libby and his boss Vice President Dick Cheney, both Wilson and Plame Wilson were “hugely important.” Libby was “wrapped around the issue of who told him. He’s wrapped himself around the issue of Valerie Wilson.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]'Cloud over the Vice President' - Fitzgerald focuses on Cheney, saying: “There is a cloud over the vice president. He wrote on those columns. He had those meetings. He sent Libby off to the meeting with Judith Miller where Plame was discussed. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice. That cloud is there. That cloud is something that we just can’t pretend isn’t there.” Libby was “not supposed to be talking to other people,” Fitzgerald says. “The only person he told is the vice president.… Think about that.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; Salon, 2/22/2007; Murray Waas, 12/23/2008] Plame Wilson will later write, “He suggested that [Cheney] was, at a minimum, complicit with Libby in the leak of my name.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 293]Defense Objection - Fitzgerald lists example after example of Libby’s memory being far better than the defense describes. In the process, he tells the jury that Libby must have known Plame Wilson’s role at the CIA was important, and therefore something he was unlikely to forget, because he was “discussing something with people that could lead to people being killed.… If someone is outed, people can get in trouble overseas. They can get arrested, tortured, or killed.” Fitzgerald’s implication is clear: Plame Wilson was a covert agent. The defense objects, citing Judge Reggie Walton’s ruling that neither the prosecution nor defense will refer to Plame Wilson’s covert status. Fitzgerald tells the jurors they should think about the “people being killed” scenario to understand Libby’s “state of mind,” but they should not draw any conclusions about “whether it’s true or false.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; National Review, 2/21/2007; New York Sun, 2/21/2007]No Conspiracy, Just Lies - The things Libby remembered best were the things we all remember best, Fitzgerald says: items that are unique, items that are important, and items that make you angry. The Plame Wilson identity issue, he says, was all three to Libby. His memory did not let him down. Instead, Fitzgerald says, Libby lied under oath. “He made his bet, planted his feet, and stuck. From then on he told the same story.” There is no conspiracy to scapegoat Libby, he reiterates (see January 23, 2007). There is just Libby, lying to protect his job and his freedom from imprisonment. “You know you’re not surprised on Thursday, if you gave it out Monday and Tuesday, you weren’t surprised.” Conclusion - “Don’t you think the American people are entitled to answers?” Fitzgerald asks. “Don’t you think the FBI deserves straight answers?… He threw sand in the eyes of the FBI. He stole the truth of the judicial system. You return a verdict of guilty and you give the truth back.” [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007]Judge Instructs Jury on Fitzgerald's Argument - After Fitzgerald concludes, Walton tells the jury: “I’m going to give you another cautionary. The truth of whether someone could be harmed based upon the disclosure of people working in a covert capacity is not at issue in this case. Remember what I have told you several times. Mr. Libby is not charged with leaking classified information.” Walton is referring to Fitzgerald’s implication that Plame Wilson was a covert CIA official. Walton dismisses the jurors for the day, and tells them that tomorrow they begin their deliberations. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/20/2007; National Review, 2/21/2007]

Jurors begin deliberating in the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007). In an hour of jury instructions, Judge Reggie Walton tells the jury to focus on the specific charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, and “not to let the nature of the case” affect its deliberations. The jury will deliberate every weekday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with an hour for lunch, until it has reached a verdict. [MSNBC, 2/21/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/21/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] The proceedings begin with a query about a juror’s impartiality towards a lawyer from the firm of Baker Botts, who appeared yesterday with the defense team for closing arguments. Walton determines that no issue exists and turns to jury instructions. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/21/2007] Warning the jury to “follow the law” and not “question the law,” Walton explains that Libby is presumed innocent unless the jury finds him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, “then you must find guilty.” He walks the jury through each of the charges, and explains how the jury can find verdicts: On the single obstruction count, the jury can find Libby guilty if it unanimously decides that any one, or more, of three Libby statements are lies: that NBC reporter Tim Russert asked Libby if Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA and said all the reporters knew it (see July 10 or 11, 2003), that Libby was surprised to learn the Plame Wilson information from Russert, and that Libby told reporter Matthew Cooper he’d heard it from reporters but didn’t know it was true. On one count of lying to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), the jury can find Libby guilty if it finds either or both of his statements about the Russert conversation were lies. On the other count of lying to the FBI, the jury can find Libby guilty if it decides that Libby lied about the content of his conversation with reporter Matt Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). On two counts of perjury, the jury will have to weigh a number of statements Libby made to the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004) about how he learned of Plame Wilson’s CIA employment and whom he told, including four separate statements in one count. [Associated Press, 2/21/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/21/2007]Because of the lengthy instructions from Walton, the jury deliberates less than five hours today. [CBS News, 1/25/2007] The Associated Press reports the jury makeup as “a former Washington Post reporter, an MIT-trained economist, a retired math teacher, a former museum curator (see February 14, 2007), a law firm accountant, a Web architect, and several retired or current federal workers. There are 10 whites and two blacks—unexpected in a city where blacks outnumber whites more than 2-to-1.” [Associated Press, 2/21/2007]

Media responses to the closing arguments in the Libby trial (see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007, 11:00 a.m. February 20, 2007, and 3:00 p.m. February 20, 2007) are strong and varied. 'Strongest Arguments Yet' of Cheney's Complicity - New York Sun reporter Josh Gerstein writes that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s “explosive” statements were his “strongest arguments yet” that Vice President Dick Cheney directed former chief of staff Lewis Libby to out CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson. Libby was “not supposed to be talking to other people,” Fitzgerald said. “The only person he told is the vice president.… Think about that.” [New York Sun, 2/21/2007]Fitzgerald Put 'Vice President on Trial' - Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff writes, “Fitzgerald pretty much made it clear to the jury that Libby, in the prosecution’s mind, was protecting the vice president of the United States.” Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News adds: “I think Fitzgerald and his fellow prosecutors put the vice president on trial, even though he was not charged with anything. But he was very much front and center in this trial from start to finish.” [Washington Post, 2/21/2007]Fitzgerald 'Sinister,' 'Overcaffeinated'; Wells 'Erratic' - Conservative columnist Byron York is somewhat taken aback at Fitzgerald’s focus on Cheney, calling Fitzgerald “quite sinister” in his statements about Cheney’s apparent complicity in the leak. York sums up the two sides’ arguments and presentational styles. He calls both sides “uneven,” and says that defense attorney Theodore Wells’s performance “was erratic, sometimes appearing to defend his own honor more than his client’s, and sometimes brilliantly dismantling the credibility of key prosecution witnesses.” York writes that Fitzgerald “seemed overcaffeinated and overreaching, perhaps overwhelming the jury with the minutiae of the case.” He concludes, “How their closing summations will play with jurors is anybody’s guess.” [National Review, 2/21/2007]Praise for Wells - The Washington Post’s Linton Weeks is more complimentary of Well’s closing statement. Weeks’s analysis of Wells’s close is similar to the glowing profile published by the New York Times earlier in the trial (see February 10, 2007). He portrays Wells as “tall, athletic, mustachioed—like a fighter imaging the bout to come,” and possessed of “an inner toughness of someone who will use any combination of punches to win big.” He notes that Wells paused during the proceedings to check on his elderly mother, watching her son from a wheelchair in the courtroom aisle. Though Weeks writes that Wells had “moments [that] seemed out of sync,” hurrying through a PowerPoint slide presentation, “[a]t other times, he was impressive, trying to convince the jury that the prosecution was attempting to ruin Libby based on a few conversations with reporters.” Weeks quotes one of Wells’s colleagues, Washington lawyer Stanley Brand, as saying Wells “has a wonderful demeanor… a master tactician… a bulldog, but in a gentle way.” Brand calls Wells “one of the five best trial lawyers in the country.” Weeks then spins an admiring biography of the “tough defense attorney who has mastered the balance between easygoing and hard-charging,” and uses Wells’s high school and college football career upon which to hang his final metaphor: “There in the middle of the courtroom, Wells was playing center again, helping call the plays and protecting the guy with the ball. Laughing in the beginning, crying in the end.” [Washington Post, 2/21/2007]Sincere and Insincere Emotions - Author Marcy Wheeler, writing for the blog FireDogLake (see February 15, 2007), says that assistant prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg baited Wells into going into a sincere rage at the beginning of his argument. In the first portion of the prosecution’s close, Zeidenberg told the jury that Wells had not proven the White House conspiracy he alleged, and, Wheeler writes, Wells spent the first 20 minutes of his closing argument defending his trial strategy. “This was real rage,” she writes, “but it was rage in the service of Ted Wells, not rage in the service of Scooter Libby.” By goading Wells into losing his composure and defending his own actions, Wheeler writes, Wells was forced to rush his climactic argument. Wheeler says that Wells “really does have a schtick, one that the journalists who have seen him before all recognize. He finishes the rational part of his case. Then he spends the last 20 minutes or so summoning rage for his client. He brings all the emotion summoned for his client to a crescendo. And then he weeps, demonstrating clearly to the jury how deeply he believes that his client has been wronged.” But because Wells wasted the first 20 minutes defending his own actions, he “had no time to get into character, and he went immediately from a rushed but rational argument about memory into his emotional appeal.… [C]ompared to the real rage Wells had shown earlier in the day, it looked fake. Utterly, completely fake. Because Wells reacted to Zeidenberg’s barbs, he showed the jury true emotion that made all his elaborate schtick—the thing that Wells does best, normally—look like an act.” Moreover, Fitzgerald was able to mock the outrage that Wheeler believes to be “schtick” (see 3:00 p.m. February 20, 2007) all the more effectively because he almost never raised his voice or displayed any passion throughout the trial. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/21/2007]Facts vs. Emotion - Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton administration adviser who has written a book critical of the Bush administration, writes that the prosecution depended largely on a structure of facts and evidence, while the defense relied much more on emotional appeals to the jury. He writes, “[T]he final argument on behalf of Scooter Libby was Libby’s last disinformation campaign.” Of the defense’s attacks on the credibility of news reports and the journalists who make them, Blumenthal writes: “This extraordinary defense—that nothing in any newspaper can be considered true—was the reductio ad absurdum of the Bush administration’s use and abuse of the press corps. Having manipulated it to plant stories on weapons of mass destruction to legitimize the Iraq war, Libby, who was centrally involved in those disinformation efforts, was reduced to defending himself on the basis that newspapers cannot be trusted to publish the truth.” Of Fitzgerald’s pronouncement of a “cloud” over Cheney, Blumenthal writes that “Fitzgerald made clear that he believed that Cheney was the one behind the crime for which he was prosecuting Libby. It was Cheney who was the boss, Cheney who gave the orders, and Cheney to whom Libby was the loyal soldier, and it is Cheney for whom Libby is covering up.” [Salon, 2/22/2007]

The Washington Post publishes a speculative article about the possible reactions that will ensue if Lewis Libby is acquitted. An acquittal, the article states, would be severely damaging to the reputation of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has for years been lambasted for trying a case that some believe should never have been brought to court. Attorney Robert Mintz says, “The stakes are enormously high.” If Fitzgerald loses this case, he says, “some will say he lost his way in his search for truth, just another case of a prosecutor who sets off and thinks they can’t come back unless they have a prosecution, no matter how trivial.” Fitzgerald’s reputation as a non-partisan prosecutor will be tarnished, Mintz notes. Other lawyers say Fitzgerald had a duty to bring the case to trial. Former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) says that no matter what the verdict, Fitzgerald will be judged as a prosecutor run amok who chased petty political crimes “to the ends of the Earth.… He had to realize early on that the matter he was appointed to investigate was not a crime. He should have put his little papers in his briefcase and gone back to Chicago.” Thompson sits on the board of the Libby Legal Defense Fund (see After October 28, 2005). [Washington Post, 2/22/2007]

A juror in the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007)—an older woman who works at an art gallery (see February 14, 2007)—is dismissed after she discloses that she had come into contact with information about the case from outside the courtroom. The defense says it is willing to continue with 11 jurors, but the prosecution wants to seat an alternate juror and bring the number back to 12. To seat an alternate would mean restarting jury deliberations from the beginning. Judge Reggie Walton rules that the deliberations can continue with 11 jurors. [Jane Hamsher, 2/26/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] Reportedly, the defense is quite pleased with the dismissal, as the juror in question is considered sympathetic to the prosecution. [Jane Hamsher, 2/26/2007] Outed CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson will write of her relief at avoiding a mistrial: “It felt like a bullet had been dodged.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 294]

Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway. [Source: Camera (.org)]Boston Globe columnist H. D. S. Greenway writes that the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see January 16-23, 2007) has revealed “the astonishing lengths to which Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration went to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson for his 2003 claim that the administration had been dead wrong about Saddam Hussein trying to buy material from Niger to make nuclear weapons. The intensity and single mindedness of this pursuit leapt out from the testimony.” Greenway calls the decision to “out” Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a CIA agent in their attempt to impugn Wilson’s character an act of “desperation,” and “the intensity of the Wilson smear campaign… obsessive.” He writes, “The concept that she had sent her husband to Niger on some kind of boondoggle, instead of to investigate the Saddam sale, is bizarre in the extreme.” Most importantly, the trial revealed the lengths the White House went to protect both the case for going to war in Iraq and “Cheney’s connection to flawed intelligence. There you have it. In the most dysfunctional administration of our time, the vice president’s office felt free to use classified information to bolster a false impression of Saddam’s nuclear capabilities—going to absurd lengths to keep the truth from the American people and perhaps even the White House.” The real reason for war was to begin the neoconservative plan for remaking the Middle East to conform to their vision; the real reason for smearing Wilson was that he exposed that underlying rationale for war. Greenway concludes: “Everybody now, hawks and doves, even the neo-cons, agree that the Bush administration mismanaged the Iraq war. But what Americans need to realize is that the whole concept of attacking a country in order to remake it into America’s image is horribly wrong and counterproductive in the extreme—not just its faulty execution. The Libby trial jury is still out at this writing, but the concept that he could forget conversations he made on the excuse that he was too consumed with the plans for war is something I have trouble believing. At the time discrediting Wilson was Libby’s war.” [Boston Globe, 2/27/2007]

The jury in the Lewis Libby perjury trial submits a request for clarification to Judge Reggie Walton. The jury wishes more information pertaining to Charge 3 of the indictment (see October 28, 2005), a perjury charge regarding Libby’s alleged lies about his conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). The jurors are not sure whether Libby’s claim of learning about Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA identity from reporters was made in the context of the conversation. Walton is unclear what the jury is asking, and requests more information about its question. The note reads, “Page 74 of the jury instructions, ‘Count 3 of the indictment alleges that Mr. Libby falsely told the FBI on October 14 or November 26, 2003 (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003), that during a conversation with M. Cooper of Time magazine on July 12, 2003 (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003), Mr. Libby told Mr. Cooper that reporters were telling the administration that Mr. Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA but that Mr. Libby did not know if this was true.” Apparently the jury is confused over whether Libby is charged with lying to Cooper, the FBI, or both. Walton sends the note back with a comment: “I am not exactly certain what you are asking me. Can you please clarify your question?” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 2/27/2007 ; Marcy Wheeler, 2/28/2007; National Review, 3/5/2007] The next day, the jurors informs Walton that they have figured out the answer to their question on their own. [Jury Notes, 2/28/2007 ; Marcy Wheeler, 2/28/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 2/28/2007]

In hindsight, most observers believe that the break-in of the Nigerien embassy in Iraq that began the entire Iraq-Niger uranium affair (see January 2, 2001) was nothing more than it seemed—a crime of opportunity by individuals seeking to make money through fraud (see June or July 1999). They note that the burglary took place before President Bush took office. But Colonel Patrick Lang is not so sure. Lang, a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, thinks that the entire affair may have been orchestrated to provoke an invasion of Iraq. He notes that he has no proof to back up his speculation. That being said, he goes on to note his belief that the US neoconservatives, who were so intensely interested in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, would not have hesitated to reach out to their friends in Italian intelligence (SISMI) even before Bush entered the White House. Lang tells author Craig Unger: “There’s no doubt in my mind that the neocons had their eye on Iraq. This is something they intended to do, and they would have communicated that to SISMI or anybody else to get the help they wanted.” SISMI would have cooperated, Lang says, if for no other reason than to ingratiate itself with the new US administration. Lang says: “These foreign intelligence agencies are so dependent on us that the urge to acquire IOUs is a powerful incentive by itself.… It would have been very easy to have someone go to Rome and talk to them or have one of the SISMI guys here [in Washington], perhaps the SISMI officer in the Italian embassy, talk to them.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 206-207]

The jury in the Lewis Libby perjury and obstruction trial alerts Judge Reggie Walton that it expects to work into next week before delivering a verdict. The jurors ask Walton for a dictionary, office supplies, and Friday afternoon off. Walton denies the dictionary request but grants the other two. “So I assume they will not have a verdict tomorrow either,” Walton tells lawyers for both the prosecution and defense. Earlier in the day, the jurors asked Walton for a large flip chart, masking tape, Post-It notes, a large easel-sized Post-It pad, and pictures of the various witnesses, apparently to construct their own visual aids. Walton will say he denied the dictionary request because definitions of common words can often have legal implications. Instead, he tells the jurors to ask him directly if they have questions about word or phrase meanings. [Associated Press, 3/1/2007]

The jury in the Lewis Libby trial is dismissed three hours early to take care of personal, professional, and medical needs (see March 1, 2007). The jury deliberates less than five hours. [CBS News, 1/25/2007] It also requests clarification on its evaluation of the Libby grand jury transcripts (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), and further explanation of the term “reasonable doubt” as it would pertain to Libby’s claims of a faulty memory. The jury sends a question to Judge Reggie Walton pertaining to the issue of specificity concerning statements made by Libby to reporter Matthew Cooper in 2003 (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). This is the second time it has asked for clarification on an issue surrounding the Libby-Cooper conversation (see February 27-28, 2007). The jury’s note to Walton reads, “As count 1 statement 3 (pages 63 & 64) do not contain quotes, are we supposed to evaluate the entire Libby transcripts (testimony) or would the court direct us to specific pages/lines?” The second note reads: “We would like clarification of the term ‘reasonable doubt.’ Specifically, is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event in order to find guilt beyond reasonable doubt?” According to the National Review, Walton instructed the jury on “reasonable doubt” thusly: “The government has the burden of proving the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.… Reasonable doubt, as the name implies, is a doubt based on reason—a doubt for which you have a reason based upon the evidence or lack of evidence in the case. If, after careful, honest, and impartial consideration of all the evidence, you cannot say that you are firmly convinced of the defendant’s guilt, then you have a reasonable doubt.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/2/2007 ; Christy Hardin Smith, 3/2/2007; National Review, 3/5/2007] Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, now a National Review columnist, says: “It’s really a very commonsense concept. If you’re down to parsing it, it’s almost like you’re dealing with a jury that is asking why is the sky blue.” McCarthy says the note may well reflect the confusion and concerns of one or two jurors, rather than the entire panel. “A lot of times when you get notes,” he says, “you think the notes are an indication of where the jury is, and in fact they are an indication of where one or two jurors are. That would suggest that whoever is interested in that is not being led astray by some strange element of federal law, is not being led astray by the nullification defense, but has gotten themselves hung up in the epistemological aspect of not only trials, but of life. How do I know what I know? When you have people who are hung up on that, when they start to break down things that are commonsense elemental things, that is a very bad sign in terms of getting the case resolved.” [National Review, 3/5/2007] Former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith, writing for the progressive blog FireDogLake, observes that queries about reasonable doubt are common among jurors, and it’s counterproductive to read too much into them. “[M]ost criminal juries get to it eventually,” she writes. [Christy Hardin Smith, 3/2/2007]

Judge Reggie Walton, presiding over the Libby perjury trial, responds to the jury’s request for additional explanation of the term “reasonable doubt” as it pertains to defendant Lewis Libby’s claims of faulty memory leading him to lie to a grand jury (see March 2, 2007). Walton responds that he has given the jury as clear an explanation of the term as he can, and advises the jurors to reread the jury instructions. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/5/2007 ] The lawyers engage in a brief debate with Walton, with the jury out of the courtroom, indicating that the jury’s questions relate to the charge that Libby lied to the FBI about a telephone conversation he had with reporter Matthew Cooper concerning CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003). The jury asks Walton if it can use Libby’s 2004 grand jury testimony in determining Libby’s “state of mind” (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says Walton should answer “yes” insomuch as all the evidence in the case helped establish Libby’s state of mind. Libby’s lawyers disagree, saying the grand jury testimony could not be proof of the earlier statement, referring to Libby’s revelation to Cooper that Plame Wilson was a CIA official. Walton agrees with both arguments, and says his instructions to the jury will have to be carefully crafted. [Associated Press, 3/5/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 3/5/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 3/5/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 3/5/2007] Towards the end of the day, Walton and the lawyers engage in a rather abstruse discussion of the legalities surrounding the charges and the jury’s probable verdict. [Marcy Wheeler, 3/5/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 3/5/2007]

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, now a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and a frequent guest on news talk shows, writes a brief and angry response to the news that Lewis Libby was convicted of four felony charges (see March 6, 2007). Frum writes, “The man who actually did the leaking continues to earn millions of dollars, go out to dinner, and be respectfully quoted by attentive journalists,” referring to former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003). “Scooter Libby is publicly branded an oath-breaker on the basis of diverging recollections. Yet it was the man who set this case in motion, former ambassador Joe Wilson, who was caught in lie after lie by the Senate Intelligence Committee.” Frum is referring to Republican addendums to the committee’s 2004 report on Iraqi WMD, many of which have been proven false (see July 9, 2004). Lashing out further, Frum writes: “Now we remember why Democrats are so much more eager than Republicans to criminalize politics: Because they know that the ultimate power over the lives and liberties of the contestants is held by juries drawn from the most Democratic jurisdiction in the country. Would Scooter have been convicted—would a prosecutor ever have dared to try him—if the capital of the United States were located in say Indianapolis?” Frum concludes with a demand for a presidential pardon, writing: “It all makes you think: President Bush should have pardoned everybody involved in this case on the day Patrick Fitzgerald sent Judith Miller to jail. But it’s not too late: Pardon Scooter now.” [National Review, 3/6/2007] The National Review editors issue a similar condemnation of the trial and a demand for a presidential pardon (see March 6, 2007).

Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador and administration critic (see July 6, 2003) whose wife Valerie Plame Wilson’s outing as a covert CIA official sparked an investigation (see September 26, 2003), speaks to a group of reporters about the conviction of Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). Wilson is joined by Melanie Sloan, the lawyer who represents the Wilsons in their civil suit against Libby and other Bush officials they consider responsible for exposing Plame Wilson’s CIA identity (see July 13, 2006). Wilson says that since the Libby trial is over, he would like to see President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney share what they told prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald during the investigation (see June 24, 2004 and May 8, 2004). As for the role of the press in the investigation, Wilson says that members of the press should rethink their efforts to protect government sources who are engaged in “disinformation campaigns.” Sloan says that many Bush administration officials, such as Cheney, “are in fact still hiding” from the truth about their involvement in exposing Plame Wilson. [FireDogLake, 3/6/2007]

MSNBC ‘Breaking News’ image with photo of Lewis Libby immediately after he learns he is found guilty. [Source: MSNBC]A jury finds former White House official Lewis “Scooter” Libby guilty of multiple felonies relating to his divulging the identity of former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Libby is found guilty of two counts of perjury, one count of making false statements, and one count of obstruction of justice. He is acquitted of one count of lying to the FBI, Count Three of the charges. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/6/2007 ; Marcy Wheeler, 3/6/2007; Washington Post, 7/3/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007]No Further Charges - The Associated Press writes, “The trial revealed how top members of the Bush administration were eager to discredit Plame [Wilson]‘s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of doctoring prewar intelligence on Iraq.” Libby remains expressionless during the reading of the verdicts, but his wife sobs and lowers her head as the verdicts are announced. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says no additional charges pertaining to the Plame Wilson leak investigation will be filed. “The results are actually sad,” Fitzgerald tells reporters. “It’s sad that we had a situation where a high-level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did.” Fitzgerald adds that Libby, by lying and obstructing justice, harmed the process of law, and made it more difficult to find out who actually did what in the Plame Wilson leak. [Associated Press, 3/6/2007; Christy Hardin Smith, 3/6/2007]Libby the 'Fall Guy'; Memory Defense Implausible - Libby will be sentenced to 30 months in prison (see June 5, 2007). One juror, Denis Collins, tells reporters that he and his fellow jurors found passing judgment on Libby “unpleasant,” but that in final consideration, Libby’s story was too difficult to believe. Collins, a former Washington Post reporter, tells reporters that the jurors had constructed 34 poster-sized pages filled with information they distilled from the trial testimony (see March 1, 2007). They determined that Libby had been told about Plame Wilson’s CIA status at least nine different times, and could not accept the defense’s argument that he forgot about knowing it (see January 31, 2006). “Even if he forgot that someone told him about Mrs. Wilson, who had told him, it seemed very unlikely he would not have remembered about Mrs. Wilson,” Collins says. But, Collins goes on to say, the jurors believe there is more to the story than Libby’s criminal behavior. “We’re not saying we didn’t think Mr. Libby was guilty,” Collins says, “but it seemed like… he was the fall guy” for Vice President Dick Cheney, his former boss. Collins says the jurors felt “a tremendous amount of sympathy” for Libby, and wondered why they were not hearing from other White House officials in Libby’s defense, particularly Cheney and Bush political strategist Karl Rove. “It was said a number of times: ‘What are we doing with this guy here? Where’s Rove? Where are these other guys?’” He says that the testimony of Cheney aide John Hannah was particularly hurtful to Libby’s case (see February 13, 2007), with Hannah seesawing between claiming Libby had an “awful” memory (see January 31, 2006) and then saying he had an incredible grasp of minute details. Collins describes the jury as “dispassionate” in its deliberations, and adds that it took the jury over a week to conclude Libby was guilty of any charges. He says that one juror held out for Libby’s innocence on Count Three, based on reasonable doubt; otherwise the entire jury was unanimous for Libby’s guilt. Fitzgerald says that because Libby lied to both FBI investigators and the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson identity leak, it became impossible to fully investigate Cheney’s role in leaking Plame Wilson’s covert identity. [Associated Press, 3/6/2007; Jane Hamsher, 3/6/2007; Marcy Wheeler, 3/6/2007; Murray Waas, 12/23/2008] In her 2007 book Fair Game, Plame Wilson will reflect, “[I]t seemed that Libby’s defense tactic of casting him as a ‘scapegoat’ (see January 16-23, 2007) had worked, but not in the way they had intended.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 294-295]New Trial? - Libby’s defense attorney, Theodore Wells, says he will request a new trial—something the BBC will call “a common tactic”—and if it is denied, Wells says he will appeal the verdict. Libby is fingerprinted and released on his own recognizance to await sentencing. [Christy Hardin Smith, 3/6/2007; BBC, 7/3/2007] “We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated,” Wells tells reporters. “We believe Mr. Libby is totally innocent and that he didn’t do anything wrong.” [Associated Press, 3/6/2007]Weeping with Relief - Plame Wilson will recall watching the news on television: “To say I was a bundle of nerves—it felt like I needed two hands to stir the milk in my coffee—would be an understatement.” When the verdicts are read, she begins to “cry with relief,” and immediately calls her husband Joseph Wilson. His response: “Thank God. The charge of obstruction of justice was the most important.” Of her own feelings, Plame Wilson will write, “My feelings of deep sadness over the entire affair were tempered by relief that our justice system still worked as intended.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 294-295]White House Response - White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino says President Bush watched news of the verdict on television in the Oval Office. Perino says the president respects the jury’s verdict but “was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family.” Perino says the verdict should not be construed as in any way embarrassing for the White House: “I think that any administration that has to go through a prolonged news story that is unpleasant and one that is difficult—when you’re under the constraints and the policy of not commenting on an ongoing criminal matter—that can be very frustrating.” [Associated Press, 3/6/2007]

The editorial board of the conservative National Review demands that President Bush pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby immediately (see March 6, 2007). The editorial joins an angry demand for a presidential pardon in the magazine’s pages from former Bush speechwriter David Frum (see March 6, 2007). The editors write that Libby was “the target of a politicized prosecution set in motion by bureaucratic infighting and political cowardice,” powered by “liberal partisans” who leapt on the exposure of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson and adopted her husband Joseph Wilson’s “paranoid persecution theory” (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006). A “scandal-hungry media” joined in with the Wilsons to launch unwarranted attacks on the White House, the editors write, which eventually forced the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Plame Wilson identity leak (see December 30, 2003). The editors blame the CIA, the State Department, Congressional Democrats, and the “liberal media” for forcing the issue, and say the Justice Department was too quick to appoint special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, whom they note is a “close friend” of the person who appointed him, Deputy Attorney General James Comey (see December 30, 2003). The editors insist that Libby’s “imperfect memory” (see January 31, 2006) led to the charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, and the testimony of reporters throughout the trial proved that their memories were no better than Libby’s. The editors conclude: “There should have been no referral, no special counsel, no indictments, and no trial. The ‘CIA-leak case’ has been a travesty. A good man has paid a very heavy price for the Left’s fevers, the media’s scandal-mongering, and President Bush’s failure to unify his own administration. Justice demands that Bush issue a pardon and lower the curtain on an embarrassing drama that shouldn’t have lasted beyond its opening act.” [National Review, 3/6/2007]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) welcomes the jury’s verdict in the Lewis Libby trial (see March 6, 2007), and calls on President Bush not to pardon Libby. “It’s about time someone in the Bush administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics,” Reid says. The White House refuses to comment on Reid’s statement. [Associated Press, 3/6/2007]

Within hours of the four guilty verdicts against Lewis Libby being handed down (see March 6, 2007), former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing publishes a brief article on the Web site of the National Review, a conservative news and opinion publication, delineating the arguments behind a possible appeal of the verdicts. Toensing was a signatory of a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of Libby (see March 23, 2005), and has written numerous articles attacking the prosecution and disparaging the trial (see November 2-9, 2005, November 3, 2005, November 7, 2005, September 15, 2006, and February 18, 2007). She writes that the trial verdicts “make… no logical sense, but that won’t bother the legal notions of an appellate court.” Toensing represents the verdicts as the jury finding that Libby lied to a grand jury about his conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004), but did not lie about the same conversation to the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003). Toensing opines that “[t]he court punished Libby for not taking the stand,” which she says made Judge Reggie Walton “furious” and led him to limit Libby’s use of his “memory defense” (see February 12, 2007). She also objects to Walton’s refusal to allow the defense to attack NBC reporter Tim Russert for apparent contradictions in his testimony (see February 14, 2007). And she falsely states that Walton repeatedly allowed special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to characterize CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson as “classified” or “covert” during the trial, saying such characterizations were “highly prejudicial”; in reality, Walton prohibited the jury from hearing testimony that would confirm or deny Plame Wilson’s classified status, and supported a defense objection to Fitzgerald’s implication to such a status during his closing argument (see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007). Toensing notes that Fitzgerald did call Plame Wilson “classified” in a press conference held after Libby’s conviction was declared in the court, and reiterates her argument that exposing Plame Wilson’s CIA status does not constitute a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. [National Review, 3/6/2007] Ten days after Toensing’s article, Plame Wilson will confirm to Congress that she was a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996, Late 1990s-2001 and Possibly After, April 22, 1999, (July 11, 2003), Before July 14, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 30, 2003, September 30, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, January 9, 2006, February 13, 2006, and September 6, 2006) up to the moment she was exposed by columnist Robert Novak (see March 16, 2007).

Fox News tells viewers Libby not guilty. [Source: NewsCorpse (.com)]Fox News takes an alternate view from most news outlets in reporting Lewis Libby’s convictions on four out of five felony charges (see March 6, 2007). In its news crawler on the bottom of the television broadcast, it reports, “Scooter Libby found not guilty of lying to FBI investigators.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 295]

Fred Thompson. [Source: Politico]Former US Senator Fred Dalton Thompson (R-TN), who plays an executive district attorney in the popular television crime drama Law and Order, writes a column for the National Review ironically titled “Law and Disorder,” lambasting the Lewis Libby trial verdict (see March 6, 2007). Thompson, who has aspirations to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, says that special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald “look[ed] like a man who has dodged a bullet and is ready to get out of town” after his post-verdict press conference. Thompson labels the trial verdict a “sorry state of affairs” and says Libby was convicted for two reasons. Justice Department 'Folded under Political and Media Pressure' - First, “the Justice Department folded under political and media pressure because of the Plame [Wilson] leak and appointed a special counsel,” thus “abdicat[ing] their official responsibility” to refuse to investigate the leak. Secondly, “[t]he Plame/Wilson defenders [referring to Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson] wanted administration blood because the administration had had the audacity to question the credibility of Joe Wilson and defend themselves against his charges.” The Justice Department, “in order to completely inoculate themselves, gave power and independence to Fitzgerald that was not available to Ken Starr, Lawrence Walsh, or any prior independent counsel under the old independent counsel law. Fitzgerald became unique in our judicial history in that he was accountable to no one. And here even if Justice had retained some authority they could hardly have asked Fitzgerald why he continued to pursue a non-crime because they knew from the beginning there was no crime.” Thompson writes that, once appointed special counsel, “Fitzgerald began his Sherman’s march through the law and the press until he thought he had finally come up with something to justify his lofty mandate—a case that would not have been brought in any other part of the country” (Thompson is referring to Washington, DC, which many conservatives consider an unusually liberal area of the nation; presumably he is arguing that the jury was unduly comprised of liberals—see January 16-23, 2007). The media, Thompson writes, was by then “suffering from Stockholm syndrome—[t]hey feared and loved Fitzgerald at the same time. He was establishing terrible precedent by his willingness to throw reporters in jail over much less than serious national security matters—the Ashcroft standard! Yet Fitzgerald was doing the Lord’s work in their eyes. This was a ‘bad leak,’ not a ‘good leak’ like the kind they like to use. And it was much better to get the Tim Russert and Ari Fleischer treatment than it is to get the Judith Miller treatment [referring to Russert’s supposed ‘preferential treatment’—see February 14, 2007 and February 16, 2007—Fleischer’s grant of immunity—see February 13, 2004—and Miller’s jailing for contempt—see July 6, 2005]. Fitzgerald paid no price for his prosecutorial inconsistencies, his erroneous public statements, or his possible conflicts of interest. And now they get to point out how this case revealed the ‘deep truths’ about the White House.” 2004 Testimony from Libby Undermined Claim of Innocence - The second reason Libby was convicted, Thompson writes, was his decision to testify before Fitzgerald’s grand jury “without counsel… with this controversy swirling around him while trying to remember and recount conversations with various news reporters—reporters who he knew would be interviewed about these conversations themselves” (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). (Libby is himself a lawyer, and spoke with White House counsel before testifying.) Libby’s decision to testify without the presence of counsel, says Thompson, is the action of “a man with nothing to hide… who doesn’t appreciate the position he is in or what or whom he is dealing with.” Libby was convicted out of actions stemming from his own “naivety” (sic), Thompson writes. [National Review, 3/7/2006]

Speaking of the conviction of former White House official Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007), former Justice Department prosecutor Guy Singer says: “A conviction at that high level within the White House is almost unheard of in our history. It is exceedingly rare that a prosecution is initiated, let alone concluded, at this level. For such a high-ranking member to be convicted of obstructing justice is really astounding.” [Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2007]

The Wall Street Journal joins the National Review (see March 6, 2007 and March 6, 2007), the New York Post (see March 7, 2007), and a law professor whom the Journal published in today’s editorial pages (see March 7, 2007) in demanding that President Bush pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). The Journal’s editorial board hopes that “Bush will realize that this case was always a political fight over Iraq and do the right thing by pardoning Mr. Libby.” Like its fellow conservative pundits and media outlets, the Journal calls the conviction “a travesty of justice,” and writes that the Libby defense team “seems to have blundered by portraying Mr. Libby as the ‘fall guy’ for others in the White House. That didn’t do enough to rebut [special counsel Patrick] Fitzgerald’s theory of the case, and so the jury seems to have decided that Mr. Libby must have been lying to protect something. The defense might have been better off taking on Mr. Fitzgerald for criminalizing political differences.” Libby was “convicted of telling the truth about” Joseph and Valerie Plame Wilson “to some reporters (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) but then not owning up to it.” The Journal believes Libby “tried to cooperate with the grand jury because he never really believed he had anything to hide” (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004). The entire case was brought, the Journal avers, to attack the Bush administration’s push for war with Iraq. The Bush administration bears its own culpability, the Journal says, for not “confront[ing] Mr. Wilson’s lies head on” and instead becoming “defensive,” allowing “a trivial matter to become a threat to the administration itself.” The White House should not have allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself from the investigation (see December 30, 2003) and let the Justice Department appoint Fitzgerald to investigate the leaks. “Mr. Libby got caught in the eddy not because he was dishonest but because he was a rare official who actually had the temerity to defend the president’s Iraq policy against Mr. Wilson’s lies.” The Journal also criticizes “most of our brethren” in the media for “celebrating the conviction… because it damaged the Bush administration they loathe.” It concludes by asserting, “The time for a pardon is now.” [Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2007]

Constitutional law professor Ronald D. Rotunda, a former fellow at the conservative Cato Institute, publishes an editorial in the Wall Street Journal outlining an argument in favor of pardoning convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). President Bush has the absolute power to issue a pardon, and Rotunda writes that “[i]n the unusual circumstances of this case, a presidential pardon is appropriate,” even before an appeal is filed. Rotunda bases his arguments for a pardon on similar assertions that other Libby supporters have made: no laws were broken in the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA official; Plame Wilson and her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson, “appeared to revel in the publicity” (see July 14, 2003 and July 14, 2003); former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, not Libby, first leaked Plame Wilson’s identity to a reporter (see June 13, 2003); and the guilty verdict hinged on the differing memories of the various participants in the White House leaks of Plame Wilson’s identity. In addition, according to Rotunda the charges against Libby were an “abuse” of the perjury statutes, and the verdict works to “normaliz[e] the criminalization of policy differences.” [Wall Street Journal, 3/7/2007; George Mason University, 2009]

The New York Times editorial board publishes an op-ed about the conviction of former White House official Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). The Times writes that Libby, at one time one of the most senior officials in the White House, “was caught lying to the FBI. He appears to have been trying to cover up a smear campaign that was orchestrated by his boss against the first person to unmask one of the many untruths that President Bush used to justify invading Iraq. He was charged with those crimes, defended by the best lawyers he could get, tried in an open courtroom, and convicted of serious felonies.” The Times says the verdict is a “reminder of how precious the American judicial system is, at a time when it is under serious attack from the same administration Mr. Libby served. That administration is systematically denying the right of counsel, the right to evidence, and even the right to be tried to scores of prisoners who may have committed no crimes at all.” The Times also notes that the trial gave an important glimpse into “the methodical way that [Vice President Dick] Cheney, Mr. Libby, [White House political strategist] Karl Rove, and others in the Bush inner circle set out to discredit Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson IV. Mr. Wilson, a career diplomat, [who] was sent by the State Department in 2002 [later corrected by the Times to acknowledge that the CIA sent Wilson] to check out a British intelligence report that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the government of Niger for a secret nuclear weapons program.” Wilson’s exposure of the Bush administration’s false claims that Iraq had tried to buy Nigerien uranium (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) led to a Cheney-led “smear campaign” against Wilson (see June 2003, June 3, 2003, June 11, 2003, June 12, 2003, June 19 or 20, 2003, July 6, 2003, July 6-10, 2003, July 7, 2003 or Shortly After, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, July 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, July 18, 2003, October 1, 2003, April 5, 2006, and April 9, 2006) which led to the exposure of his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, as a covert CIA official (see June 13, 2003, June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, and July 12, 2003). The Times writes: “That is what we know from the Libby trial, and it is some of the clearest evidence yet that this administration did not get duped by faulty intelligence; at the very least, it cherry-picked and hyped intelligence to justify the war.… What we still do not know is whether a government official used Ms. Wilson’s name despite knowing that she worked undercover. That is a serious offense, which could have put her and all those who had worked with her in danger.” While the Times decries special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald jailing a former Times reporter, Judith Miller, for refusing to reveal Libby as her confidential source (see July 6, 2005), “it was still a breath of fresh air to see someone in this administration, which specializes in secrecy, prevarication, and evading blame, finally called to account.” [New York Times, 3/7/2007]

The New York Post joins the National Review (see March 6, 2007 and March 6, 2007) in demanding an immediate presidential pardon for convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). The Post accuses “Democrats and Bush-bashers in the media” of “chortling with glee” over the guilty verdicts, and says special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now “has a high-level scalp on his belt,” Libby’s. The Post joins many other conservative media pundits and publications in asking why Libby was prosecuted for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson’s name to the press (see June 23, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003, and Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003) when the first admitted leaker was another government official, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003). (The Post fails to note that Armitage admitted to his leak—see October 2, 2003—while Libby committed perjury and obstruction of justice in his untruthful denials of leaking Plame Wilson’s identity—see October 14, 2003, November 26, 2003, March 5, 2004, and March 24, 2004.) Instead, the Post writes, the entire investigation and trial was about “[s]coring points against [President] Bush. That much is obvious, given prosecutor Fitzgerald’s conduct during Libby’s trial.” The Post charges Fitzgerald with being “blatantly political” in charging Vice President Dick Cheney with orchestrating the leak and violating the court’s orders not to discuss Plame Wilson’s covert status (see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007). It paints the jury as “wholly confused,” and writes that perhaps the jury was less interested in issuing a fair verdict for Libby and more interested “in just going home.” The Post exhorts President Bush to pardon Libby, and writes: “Sure, he’d take a lot of political heat for it. But Libby was in the dock because of politics—and turnabout is fair play. Free Scooter Libby.” [New York Post, 3/7/2007]

The lawyers for convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007) are preparing a request for a new trial for their client. Meanwhile, the White House is working to lower expectations for a presidential pardon for Libby, as many conservative pundits and publications have demanded (see March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, and March 7, 2007). Democrats are demanding that Libby not be pardoned (see March 6, 2007). President Bush, speaking to CNN En Espanol, says: “This was a lengthy trial on a serious matter, and a jury of his peers convicted him. And we’ve got to respect that conviction.… On a personal note, I was sad. I was sad for a man who had worked in my administration, and particularly sad for his family.” Bush refuses to say anything else because the issue is an “ongoing legal matter.” White House press secretary Tony Snow says: “All of this conversation, speculation about a pardon, I know, makes for interesting speculation, but it’s just that. Right now, Scooter Libby and his attorneys have made clear that they’re going to try to get a retrial and if they don’t get that, they’re going to get an appeal.” Snow says Bush is “careful” about awarding pardons. “These are not things to be treated blithely,” he says, adding that Bush takes the pardon process very seriously. “He wants to make sure that anybody who receives one—that it’s warranted, but I would caution against any speculation in this case.” One Libby trial juror, Ann Redington, says she supports the idea of a pardon, even though she was part of a unanimous decision to convict Libby of four felony counts. “It kind of bothers me that there was this whole big crime being investigated and he got caught up in the investigation as opposed to in the actual crime that was supposedly committed,” Redington says during an MSNBC interview. Libby’s lawyer William Jeffress says the lawyers are preparing a request for a new trial; the Associated Press observes that such requests are common and are rarely granted. Joseph Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was exposed as a covert CIA official by Libby and other White House officials, praises the verdict. “Convicting him of perjury was like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion or Alger Hiss of perjury,” Wilson says. “It doesn’t mean they were not guilty of other crimes.” [Associated Press, 3/8/2007]

Denis Collins, in a photo taken shortly after the Libby verdict was rendered. [Source: CBS News / Crooks and Liars]New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd prints a column based on an interview with Denis Collins, a juror in the Lewis Libby trial (see March 6, 2007). Dowd knows Collins from grade school as well as being journalists together, though Collins worked at the Washington Post as a sportswriter and Metro reporter while Dowd worked the same stints at the now-defunct Washington Star. Collins is tired of being interviewed by one reporter and media host after another, to the point where he has already posted his diary of his time on the jury on the Web, been interviewed by Larry King, and been reviled by Rush Limbaugh. Collins recalls that most of the jury felt Libby was relatively “small beer” compared to more high-level White House officials also involved in leaking the CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson to the press. “He’s too many steps away from the king,” Collins says. “One of the jurors said, ‘He was too busy looking out for No. 1; he should have been looking out for No. 2 and then he wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.’ One of the witnesses told us that Libby spent more time with [his former boss, Vice President Dick] Cheney than he did with his own wife and kids.” Collins says that by far the most damaging testimony came from the prosecution’s government witnesses and not the reporters who took the stand. Asked how he would feel if Libby was pardoned, Collins replies: “I would really not care. I feel like the damage has been done in terms of his reputation and the administration’s reputation.” Collins is equally ambivalent about calls for Cheney to resign or be fired, saying: “Here’s the thing: Libby followed Cheney’s instructions to go talk to reporters, but there’s no evidence at all that Cheney told him to lie about it. So the question is, was Libby just kind of inept at getting this story out?” [New York Times, 3/8/2007]

Columnist Robert Novak, who first publicly exposed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official in 2003 (see July 14, 2003), weighs in on the Lewis Libby felony convictions (see March 6, 2007). Novak accuses Democrats of trying to gin up “another Iran-Contra affair or Watergate” by demanding an investigation of the Plame Wilson leak, and of being after “much bigger game” than Libby—particularly Vice President Dick Cheney or White House political strategist Karl Rove. Novak then claims he played “but a minor role in [Libby’s] trial,” testifying only that he did not discuss Plame Wilson with Libby (see February 12, 2007). “Other journalists said the same thing under oath,” Novak writes, “but we apparently made no impression on the jury.” Novak goes on to say that “[t]he trial provided no information whatsoever about Valerie Plame [Wilson]‘s status at the CIA at the time I revealed her role in her husband’s mission. No hard evidence was produced that Libby was ever told she was undercover. [Special counsel Patrick] Fitzgerald had argued that whether or not she was covert was not material to this trial, and US District Judge Reggie B. Walton had so ruled.” (Novak’s statement contradicts former Justice Department official Victoria Toensing’s assertion that Fitzgerald repeatedly told the jury of Plame Wilson’s “classified” or “covert” status, even though Novak slams Fitzgerald for “referr[ing] to Mrs. Wilson’s secret status” during his closing statement—see 9:00 a.m. February 20, 2007). Novak denies revealing former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as one of his sources for his Plame Wilson article (see July 8, 2003), saying that Fitzgerald already knew that Armitage was one of his sources (see October 2, 2003). He writes that he assumed Fitzgerald’s knowledge “was the product of detective work by the FBI”; he did not know that Armitage had “turned himself in to the Justice Department three months before Fitzgerald entered the case, without notifying the White House or releasing me from my requirement of confidentiality” (in 2006, Novak wrote that he did name Armitage as a source—see January 14, 2004). Novak writes that President Bush “lost control of this issue when he permitted a special prosecutor to make decisions that, unlike going after a drug dealer or Mafia kingpin, turned out to be inherently political.” He concludes: “It would have taken courage for the president to have aborted this process. It would require even more courage for him to pardon Scooter Libby now, and not while he is walking out of the White House in January 2009.” [Washington Post, 3/8/2007]

Mona Charen. [Source: News New Mexico]Conservative columnist Rich Lowry, who often writes for the National Review, writes a harsh denunciation of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in a syndicated column picked up by, among other media outlets, the Salt Lake Tribune. Lowry begins by joining other conservatives in calling for a presidential pardon for convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 8, 2007, and March 9, 2007), but quickly pivots to an all-out attack on Fitzgerald’s integrity as a prosecutor and on the jury that convicted Libby. Fitzgerald “had sufficient evidence to convince a handful of people drawn from Washington, DC’s liberal jury pool that Libby was guilty,” Lowry writes, and states, without direct evidence, that even the jury “didn’t believe Libby should have been in the dock in the first place.” Lowry echoes earlier arguments that Valerie Plame Wilson was exposed as a CIA official by her husband, Joseph Wilson (see November 3, 2005 and Late August-Early September, 2006), who, Lowry writes, should have known that once he wrote a column identifying himself as a “Bush-hater” (see July 6, 2003), questions would inevitably be asked as to why someone like him would be sent on a fact-finding mission to Niger. Lowry also echoes the false claim that Plame Wilson sent her husband on the mission (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005). “Fitzgerald let himself become an instrument of political blood lust,” Lowry writes. If Democrats and other opponents of the Bush administration want to “score points against ‘the case for war,’” Lowry writes, the way to do that “is through advocacy [and] political agitation,” not by “jailing [Vice President Dick Cheney’s] former chief of staff. This is the very definition of the criminalization of politics. If the other party occupies the White House, each side in our politics is willing to embrace this criminalization, even if it means doing violence to its own interests and principles.” [Salt Lake Tribune, 3/8/2007] A day later, Lowry’s National Review colleagues, Mona Charen and Thomas Sowell, echo Lowry’s charge that Fitzgerald’s investigation “criminalized politics.” Charen goes somewhat further, labeling Fitzgerald “Ahab” in reference to the obsessed whale-boat captain of Moby Dick, and compares the Libby trial with the alleged perjury committed by former President Clinton in a sexual harassment lawsuit, where Clinton denied having an affair with a White House intern. Sowell dismisses the entire leak investigation as a great deal of nothing, and writes that Libby’s life has been ruined so that “media liberals” can “exult… as if their conspiracy theories had been vindicated.” [National Review, 3/9/2007; National Review, 3/9/2007]

Washington Times editor Wesley Pruden calls on President Bush to immediately pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007), calling Libby’s prosecution “malicious” and Patrick Fitzgerald a “rogue prosecutor.” Bush could turn the guilty verdict “into a Democratic debacle” by “appealing successfully to the American spirit of fair play.” Pruden asserts, without evidence, that the jury has said “they had to put clothespins on their noses to return guilty verdicts.” But Bush, like other Republican presidents, lacks boldness, and makes the perpetual mistake of being too “nice” to “the enemy,” the Democrats. Once Bush explains his pardon to the American citizenry, “they would applaud settling the account,” Pruden writes. The only criminals in the entire affair are Fitzgerald and “the judges who let him get away with” prosecuting Libby. Pruden lambasts Republicans such as Senator Trent Lott (R-MS) and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) who counsel caution about issuing a pardon. Pruden concludes, “A pardon, now, would right a grievous government wrong.” [Washington Times, 3/9/2007]

Syndicated columnist Linda Chavez extends the recent spate of conservative attacks on the integrity of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the aftermath of the Lewis Libby trial verdict (see March 6, 2007). Echoing columns by other conservative pundits and editorial boards (see March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 8-9, 2007, and March 9, 2007), Chavez accuses Fitzgerald and even “some jury members” of having inappropriate “motivations” to wreak harm on Libby’s former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney. Fitzgerald was either a deliberate or an unwitting tool of “virtually everyone on the left and much of the press” to pursue the leak of official Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status in an attempt to go after Cheney, a pursuit Chavez calls a “vendetta.” Chavez concludes: “It is clear that from the beginning, Fitzgerald’s only interest was in directly implicating the vice president in the leak. When he was unable to do so, he decided to punish Scooter Libby for protecting his boss.” [Post Chronicle, 3/11/2007] Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mark Steyn joins Chavez in denouncing Fitzgerald, calling the prosecution “perverse” and a “mockery” of justice, and accusing Fitzgerald of deliberately attempting to besmirch the White House by prosecuting Libby. He concludes by saying that Fitzgerald’s conduct during the entire investigation and trial was a “disgrace.” [Chicago Sun-Times, 3/11/2007]

A CNN/Opinion Research poll shows that almost 70 percent of Americans believe the president should not pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). The results show that 69 percent oppose a pardon and 18 percent favor a pardon. Also, 52 percent believe that Libby’s former boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, was involved in covering up the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak. Twenty-nine percent disagree. [CNN, 3/12/2007] A poll published four days later by Gallup shows that 67 percent of those polled believe President Bush should not pardon Libby, and 21 percent believe that he should. The Gallup poll shows that 34 percent of Republicans support a pardon, along with 21 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats. [Gallup Poll News Service, 3/16/2007] Hours after the CNN poll comes out, NBC reporter and MSNBC commentator Andrea Mitchell, who was tangentially involved in the Libby case (see October 3, 2003 and February 12, 2007), tells a viewing audience: “[P]olling… indicates that most people think, in fact, that he should be pardoned. Scooter Libby should be pardoned.” [Eschaton, 3/12/2007]

Following the testimony of White House Security Director James Knodell to the House Oversight Committee, in which he admitted that the White House never conducted an internal probe of the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak (see March 16, 2007), committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) writes a letter to White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten asking why the probe had never been conducted. Waxman notes that “your senior political advisor, Karl Rove, and other senior White House officials were required to report what they knew about the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity, but they did not make any such report to the White House Office of Security; and [t]here has been no suspension of security clearances or any other administrative sanction for Mr. Rove and other White House officials involved in the disclosure.” Waxman observes that the decision not to mount an internal probe, and the decision not to revoke Rove’s security clearances, are “inconsistent with the directives of Executive Order 12958, which you signed in March 2003. Under this executive order, the White House is required to ‘take appropriate and prompt corrective action’ whenever there is a release of classified information. Yet Mr. Knodell could describe no such actions after the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity.” Waxman concludes: “Taken as a whole, the testimony at today’s hearing described breach after breach of national security requirements at the White House. The first breach was the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity. Other breaches included the failure of Mr. Rove and other officials to report their disclosures as required by law, the failure of the White House to initiate the prompt investigation required by the executive order, and the failure of the White House to suspend the security clearances of the implicated officials.” Waxman requests that Bolten provide the committee “with a complete account of the steps that the White House took following the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity (1) to investigate how the leak occurred; (2) to review the security clearances of the White House officials implicated in the leak; (3) to impose administrative or disciplinary sanctions on the officials involved in the leak; and (4) to review and revise existing White House security procedures to prevent future breaches of national security.” [Speaker of the House, 3/16/2007]

James Knodell. [Source: CommonDreams (.org)]White House Director of Security James Knodell testifies to the House Oversight Committee that the White House never investigated the possible involvement of White House officials in exposing Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity. [Think Progress, 3/16/2007; Editor & Publisher, 3/18/2007; Nation, 3/19/2007] Knodell says he is aware of no such internal investigation or report from anyone in the White House: “I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office.” The White House Office of Security would be the lawful body to conduct such an investigation. Knodell testifies only after the White House dropped its resistance to his appearing before the committee, which had threatened to subpoena the White House for Knodell’s testimony. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) says that President Bush had promised a full internal probe (see September 30, 2003 and September 30, 2003), and Knodell again states he knows of no such probe. He adds that he has never talked to Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, political strategist Karl Rove, or anyone in the White House about the Plame Wilson leak. His knowledge of the affair, he says, comes from “the press.” He tells the committee that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information are required by law to own up to this, but he is not aware that anyone, including Rove, had done that. Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) calls the failure of the White House to mount an internal investigation “shocking,” and says that Knodell’s office’s failure to mount such a probe constitutes a “breach within a breach.” Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) calls it a “dereliction of duty.” Knodell promises to “review this with senior management.” He attempts to assert that since a criminal investigation was launched, no such internal probe was needed, but committee Democrats challenge his statement, saying that the criminal probe is narrowly focused, began only after months of inaction and stonewalling by the White House, and is required by law regardless of whatever other investigations are underway. Waxman asks, “[T]here was an obligation for the White House to investigate whether classified information was being leaked inappropriately, wasn’t there?” to which Knodell replies, “If that was the case, yes.” Committee Democrats also note that anyone who leaked information about classified information is required by law to have their security clearances denied, and ask Knodell why Rove still has such clearance. [Think Progress, 3/16/2007; Editor & Publisher, 3/18/2007]

Lawyer Victoria Toensing, who, as journalist David Corn will write, has served as “a point-person for the Libby Lobby, denouncing special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation of the Plame leak, and deriding his indictment of… Libby” (see February 18, 2007), testifies to the House Oversight Committee about the Valerie Plame Wilson identity leak. Toensing is following testimony from Plame Wilson herself (see March 16, 2007). Contradicting the former CIA agent, Toensing argues that the entire investigation was specious, that—despite all evidence to the contrary (see Fall 1985, Fall 1989, Fall 1992 - 1996, April 2001 and After, and February 18, 2007)—Plame Wilson was never a covert agent and therefore no one could have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) in revealing her identity to the press. Toensing even testifies that conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first printed Plame Wilson’s name in his column, didn’t identify her as a covert agent, but that identification was made by Corn in his own column (see July 16, 2003). Corn will call the allegation “a canard that some Republican spinners have been peddling for years, in an attempt to get Novak off the hook while muddying the waters.” Corn will note that once Novak published Plame Wilson’s name, her “cover was destroyed; her career was ruined; her operations and contacts were imperiled to whatever degree they were imperiled.” Corn wrote two days later that her outing was “a potential violation of the law” and that Novak may have violated the IIPA. Corn noted in the article that Plame Wilson’s husband, Joseph Wilson, refused to confirm or deny his wife’s CIA status. Corn’s article raised the possibility that Plame Wilson had been a covert agent, but presented it as mere speculation. He will write, “In the column, I even raised the possibility that Novak had botched the story and that ‘the White House has wrongly branded’ Valerie Wilson ‘as a CIA officer.’ Bottom line: I did not identify her as a ‘covert’ officer or any other kind of CIA official. I merely speculated she was a NOC. That speculation was based on Novak’s column. And given that Novak had already IDed her as a CIA ‘operative on weapons of mass destruction’ (which happened to be a ‘covert’ position within the agency), her cover—whether nonofficial or official—was blown to smithereens by the time I posted my article.” Corn calls Toensing’s allegation “a desperation-driven and misleading act of hairsplitting” designed to deflect responsibility away from Novak and the White House. Therefore, Corn will write, Toensing has lied to Congress. [Christy Hardin Smith, 3/16/2007; Nation, 3/19/2007]Toensing Lies about IIPA - Corn will note that Toensing is also lying when she insists that no one ever violated “her” law, the IIPA (which Toensing helped write). In her testimony, she says that to be a covert agent under the IIPA, an agent would have to live outside the US. Corn will note that the law makes no such distinction. The two criteria for an agent to be “covert” under the IIPA are: that person’s “identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information” and that the officer has to be “serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States.” Because Plame Wilson testified earlier in the day that she indeed served overseas as a covert agent within five years of her outing by Novak, she is indeed covered by the IIPA. Corn will write: “Toensing is free to maintain that the law ought to cover only those officers residing overseas as part of a long-term foreign assignment. But that is not what the act says. By stating that the act defines a ‘covert agent’ as an officer residing abroad (as opposed to an officer who had ‘served’ overseas), Toensing misrepresented the law to members of the committee.” Lying to Congress Is a Crime - Corn will write, “As a lawyer, Toensing is probably aware that knowingly making a false statement to a Congressional committee conducting an investigation or review is a federal crime. (See Title 18, Section 1001 of the US Code.) The punishment is a fine and/or imprisonment of up to five years. To say that I identified Valerie Wilson as a ‘covert’ officer is to make a false statement.” Committee chairman Henry Waxman is apparently unconvinced of Toensing’s honesty; when he concludes Toensing’s session, he says, “Some of the statements you’ve made without any doubt and with great authority I understand may not be accurate, so we’re going to check the information and we’re going to hold the record open to put in other things that might contradict some of what you had to say.” [Nation, 3/19/2007]

Valerie Plame Wilson testifies before the House Oversight Committee. [Source: Life]The House Oversight Committee holds a hearing about the ramifications of the Lewis Libby guilty verdict (see March 6, 2007) and the outing of former covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003). Plame Wilson is the star witness, and for the first time publicly discusses the leak and her former status as a covert agent. As earlier revealed by authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book Hubris, Plame Wilson was the covert operations chief for the Joint Task Force on Iraq (JTFI), a section of the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD), which itself is part of the agency’s clandestine operations directorate. Indeed, as Libby special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has already stated, the fact of her employment with the CIA was itself classified information (see October 28, 2005). [Wilson, 2007, pp. 299; Think Progress, 3/16/2007; Nation, 3/19/2007]Republican Attempts to Close Hearing Fail - Tom Davis (R-VA), the committee’s ranking Republican, attempts to close Plame Wilson’s testimony to the public on the grounds that her statements might threaten national security. “It would be with great reluctance, but we have to protect confidential information,” he says. Politico reporter John Bresnahan describes Davis as “clearly unhappy that the hearing is taking place at all, so his threat has to be viewed in that context.” Davis goes on to say: “We are mining something that has been thoroughly looked into. There are so many other areas where [Congressional] oversight needs to be conducted instead of the Plame thing.” The hearing will remain open to the public. [Politico, 3/14/2007]Pre-Testimony Jitters - In her book Fair Game, Plame Wilson recalls the jitters she experiences in the hours leading up to her appearance before the committee. She had tried, in the days before the hearing, “to think of every possible question the committee could throw at me.… I had to be sharp to avoid giving any information that the CIA would deem sensitive or classified. It was a minefield.” She is relieved to learn that CIA Director Michael Hayden has met with committee staffers and, she will write, “explicitly approved the use of the term ‘covert’ in describing my cover status.” She will write that though she still cannot confirm the length of her service with the CIA, she can “at least counter those who had suggested over the last few years that I was no more than a ‘glorified secretary’” (see Fall 1985, Fall 1989, Fall 1992 - 1996, and April 2001 and After). [Wilson, 2007, pp. 299]CIA Confirmed Plame Wilson's Covert Status - Before Plame Wilson testifies, committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) reads a statement saying that she had been a “covert” officer” who had “served at various times overseas” and “worked on the prevention of the development and use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States.” Waxman notes that the CIA had cleared this statement. And during subsequent questioning, committee member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) reports that Hayden had told him, “Ms. Wilson was covert.” [Nation, 3/16/2007; Think Progress, 3/16/2007; FireDogLake, 3/16/2007; Christy Hardin Smith, 3/16/2007]Confirms Her Status in CPD - Plame Wilson testifies that she is still bound by secrecy oaths and cannot reveal many of the specifics of her CIA career. However, she testifies, “I served the United States of America loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.” She says, “In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.” She also notes that she helped to “manage and run secret worldwide operations.” Prior to the Iraq war, she testifies, she had “raced to discover intelligence” on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. “While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.” Those trips had occurred within the last five years, she says, contradicting arguments that she had not functioned as a covert agent within the last five years and therefore those who revealed her identity could not be held legally accountable (see February 18, 2007). “Covert operations officers, when they rotate back for temporary assignment in Washington, are still covert,” she says. Furthermore, far from her identity as a CIA agent being “common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit,” as some have alleged (see September 30, 2003, July 12, 2004, and March 16, 2007), she testifies that she can “count on one hand” the number of people outside the agency who knew of her CIA status before her outing by White House officials. “But, all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, and all of the value of my years service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 300-302; Nation, 3/16/2007; Mother Jones, 3/16/2007] During this portion of testimony, Davis repeats an assertion that neither President Bush nor Vice President Dick Cheney were aware of Plame Wilson’s covert status during the time of her exposure. [FireDogLake, 3/16/2007]'They Should Have Been Diligent in Protecting Me and Other CIA Officers' - Plame Wilson testifies that, as the Libby trial progressed, she was “shocked and dismayed by the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer.” Many agents in CPD are covert, she says, and thusly, officials such as Cheney and Libby, who knew she worked in that division, should have been careful in spreading information about her. 'Grave' Damage to National Security - Plame Wilson says she cannot be specific about what kind of damage was done by her identity being revealed (see Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, October 29, 2005, and February 13, 2006); the CIA did perform a damage assessment, but did not share the results with her, and that assessment is classified (see Before September 16, 2003). “But the concept is obvious,” she says. “Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents who in turn risked their own lives and those of their families—to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake. Every single one of my former CIA colleagues, from my fellow covert officers, to analysts, to technical operations officers, to even the secretaries, understands the vulnerability of our officers and recognizes that the travesty of what happened to me, could happen to them. We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies. It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover… for purely political motives.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 300-302; Nation, 3/16/2007] She refuses to speculate as to the intentions of White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove in exposing her identity (see July 10, 2005). [FireDogLake, 3/16/2007]Politicization of Intelligence Dangerous, Counterproductive - Plame Wilson decries the increasingly partisan politicization of intelligence gathering and presentation under the Bush regime, saying: “The tradecraft of intelligence is not a product of speculation. I feel passionately as an intelligence professional about the creeping, insidious politicizing of our intelligence process. All intelligence professionals are dedicated to the ideal that they would rather be fired on the spot than distort the facts to fit a political view—any political view—or any ideology.… [I]njecting partisanship or ideology into the equation makes effective and accurate intelligence that much more difficult to develop. Politics and ideology must be stripped completely from our intelligence services, or the consequences will be even more severe than they have been and our country placed in even greater danger. It is imperative for any president to be able to make decisions based on intelligence that is unbiased.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 300-302; Nation, 3/16/2007]No Role in Deciding to Send Husband to Niger - Plame Wilson discusses the persistent rumors that she dispatched her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that country (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Such rumors imply that Wilson was unqualified for the mission, and was sent by his wife for reasons having to do with partisan politics and nepotism (see July 9, 2004). Plame Wilson testifies that she had no authority to send her husband anywhere under CIA auspices, that it was a co-worker’s suggestion, not hers, to send her husband (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005), and that her participation was limited to writing a note outlining her husband’s qualifications for such a fact-finding mission (see Fall 1999 and February 13, 2002). She testifies that a colleague had been misquoted in an earlier Senate Intelligence Committee report in saying that she proposed her husband for the trip, and that this colleague was not permitted to correct the record. [FireDogLake, 3/16/2007; Nation, 3/16/2007; Nation, 3/19/2007]Further Investigation Warranted - After Plame Wilson concludes her testimony, Waxman declares: “We need an investigation. This is not about Scooter Libby and not just about Valerie Plame Wilson.” Journalist David Corn concurs: “Waxman was right in that the Libby trial did not answer all the questions about the leak affair, especially those about the roles of Bush administration officials other than Libby. How did Cheney learn of Valerie Wilson’s employment at the Counterproliferation Division and what did he do with that information? How did Karl Rove learn of her CIA connection? How did Rove manage to keep his job after the White House declared anyone involved in the leak would be fired?… What did Bush know about Cheney’s and Rove’s actions? What did Bush do in response to the disclosure that Rove had leaked and had falsely claimed to White House press secretary Scott McClellan that he wasn’t involved in the leak?” Republican committee members are less sanguine about the prospect of such an investigation, with Davis noting that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had already conducted an investigation of the leak. Corn writes: “Not all wrongdoing in Washington is criminal. Valerie Wilson’s presence at the hearing was a reminder that White House officials (beyond Libby) engaged in improper conduct (which possibly threatened national security) and lied about it—while their comrades in the commentariat spinned away to distort the public debate.” [Nation, 3/16/2007; Nation, 3/19/2007]

Jack Kemp. [Source: Los Angeles Times]Former representative and Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp (R-NY) recommends that President Bush pardon convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007). Kemp’s column, printed in the conservative Web publication Town Hall, is not as vociferous in its condemnation of the Libby perjury trial and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald as some published by his conservative colleagues (see March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 8-9, 2007, March 9, 2007, and March 11, 2007). Kemp begins his column by telling his readers that two jurors in the trial, Ann Redington and Denis Collins, have “endors[ed] a pardon,” quoting Redington from her interview on MSNBC’s Hardball (see March 8, 2007) and Collins from a column by the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd (Collins’s “endorsement” was a tepid “I would really not care” when asked if he would support a pardon for Libby—see March 8, 2007). Kemp writes of a pardon, “It’s the right thing to do and it’s the right thing to do now—anything less makes a travesty of our system of justice.” Kemp echoes his colleagues’ arguments that Fitzgerald prosecuted Libby for political reasons, particularly in an attempt to target Vice President Dick Cheney. He then notes that two previous presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have pardoned government officials who were targeted by special prosecutors—Bush in his pardon of convicted Iran-Contra conspirator Caspar Weinberger (see December 25, 1992) and Clinton’s pre-emptive pardon of then-CIA Director John Deutch, who was under investigation for mishandling classified information on his home computer. Weinberger was facing the possibility of years of jail time; Deutch was negotiating with prosecutors for a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor charge. Kemp repeats debunked charges that the CIA did not treat Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as either classified or particularly sensitive (see Fall 1992 - 1996, Late 1990s-2001 and Possibly After, April 22, 1999, (July 11, 2003), Before July 14, 2003, July 22, 2003, July 30, 2003, September 30, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, January 9, 2006, February 13, 2006, September 6, 2006, and March 16, 2007) and also repeats his colleagues’ charges that the government’s witnesses had no better memories of key events than did Libby. Kemp concludes: “Most prosecutors would walk away from such a case—a case based on a faulty premise and focused on faulty memories months after the fact. President Bush would be well within presidential authority and past presidential practice if he were to rectify this travesty in the near future. My hope is he pardons Libby now!” [Town Hall (.com), 4/3/2007]

Bush officials are battling a lawsuit filed against them by former CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, according to a report by the Associated Press. Plame Wilson is suing (see July 13, 2006) four Bush administration officials—Vice President Dick Cheney (see July 7-8, 2003), White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003 and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), convicted perjurer Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007), and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003)—for deliberately disclosing her identity as a CIA official to the public for political gain. Cheney’s lawyer calls the lawsuit “a fishing expedition” and accuses Plame Wilson of making “fanciful claims.” Plame Wilson says her constitutional rights were violated by the defendants. Armitage’s lawyer says the suit is “principally based on a desire for publicity and book deals.” Plame Wilson’s lawyer counters by saying the case is “about egregious conduct by defendants that ruined a woman’s career.” Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, arguing on behalf of all four defendants, says that none of the officials deliberately disclosed classified information, specifically the information of Plame Wilson’s covert status in the CIA. The defendants’ lawyers claim that they should not be sued personally for actions taken as part of their official duties. And a Justice Department lawyer claims that Cheney should have much the same legal immunity as President Bush. [Associated Press, 5/17/2007] The lawsuit will soon be dismissed (see July 19, 2007).

Patrick Fitzgerald, who successfully prosecuted former Bush administraton official Lewis Libby for perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements (see March 6, 2007), recommends 30 to 37 months in prison for Libby’s jail sentence. In a court filing with Judge Reggie Walton, Fitzgerald notes that the Libby defense called Libby’s prosecution “unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics,” and Libby’s supporters (see February 21, 2006) continue to do so. Libby Chose to Lie - To address this charge, Fitzgerald goes back through the investigation and notes that Libby, a lawyer himself, fully understood his obligations as a government witness. “He, of course, could have told the truth, even if, as was the case for many other witnesses, doing so risked the possibility of criminal prosecution, or personal or political embarrassment,” Fitzgerald writes. “He also could have declined to speak to the FBI agents, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights before the grand jury, or challenged any lines of inquiry he believed improper. And the evidence at trial showed that Mr. Libby had access to counsel and had adequate time to review relevant documents and contemplate his conduct before he testified. Regrettably, Mr. Libby chose the one option that the law prohibited: he lied. He lied repeatedly to FBI agents and in sworn grand jury testimony, and he lied about multiple facts central to an assessment of his role in the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment. He lied about when he learned of [Valerie Plame Wilson’s] CIA employment, about how he learned of her CIA employment, about who he told of her CIA employment, and about what he said when he disclosed it. In short, Mr. Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered.” Libby’s choice to lie, Fitzgerald goes on to note, made it impossible to discover “the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s information regarding CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions.… Mr. Libby’s lies corrupted a truth-seeking process with respect to an important investigation, and on behalf of which many others subordinated important public, professional, and personal interests. To minimize the seriousness of Mr. Libby’s conduct would deprecate the value that the judicial system places on the truthfulness of witnesses, and tempt future witnesses who face similar obligations to tell the truth to question the wisdom and necessity of doing so.” Fitzgerald notes that Libby “has expressed no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility, and no recognition that there is anything he should have done differently—either with respect to his false statements and testimony, or his role in providing reporters with classified information about Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA.” Justifies Libby's Prosecution when Other Leakers Not Prosecuted - Fitzgerald counters the arguments that because only Libby, and not all three proven leakers (see October 2, 2003 and February 2004), was prosecuted, his prosecution was somehow invalid. The other leakers, Richard Armitage and Karl Rove, eventually admitted to leaking Plame Wilson’s name to the press. Libby consistently lied about his leaks. “To accept the argument that Mr. Libby’s prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage,” Fitzgerald writes, “one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the vice president. To state this claim is to refute it. Peremptorily closing this investigation in the face of the information available at its early stages would have been a dereliction of duty, and would have afforded Mr. Libby and others preferential treatment not accorded to ordinary persons implicated in criminal investigations.” States that Prosecution Knew Plame Wilson Was Covert from Outset - Fitzgerald also says what he was unable to say directly in the trial, that “it was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute… as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press.” Fitzgerald explains that he chose not to charge Libby with outing a covert intelligence agent in part because Libby’s lies, and presumably the obfuscatory and contradictory statements of other Bush administration officials, made it difficult to prove beyond doubt that Libby knew Plame Wilson was a covert agent when he exposed her as a CIA official. “On the other hand, there was clear proof of perjury and obstruction of justice which could be prosecuted in a relatively straightforward trial.” No Justification for Leniency - “In light of the foregoing,” Fitzgerald writes, “the assertions offered in mitigation are consistent with an effort by Mr. Libby’s supporters to shift blame away from Mr. Libby for his illegal conduct and onto those who investigated and prosecuted Mr. Libby for unexplained ‘political’ reasons (see March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 6, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 7, 2007, March 8-9, 2007, March 9, 2007, and March 11, 2007). The assertions provide no basis for Mr. Libby to receive a reduced sentence.… While the disappointment of Mr. Libby’s friends and supporters is understandable, it is inappropriate to deride the judicial process as ‘politics at its worst’ on behalf of a defendant who, the evidence has established beyond a reasonable doubt, showed contempt for the judicial process when he obstructed justice by repeatedly lying under oath about material matters in a serious criminal investigation.… Mr. Libby’s prosecution was based not upon politics but upon his own conduct, as well as upon a principle fundamental to preserving our judicial system’s independence from politics: that any witness, whatever his political affiliation, whatever his views on any policy or national issue, whether he works in the White House or drives a truck to earn a living, must tell the truth when he raises his hand and takes an oath in a judicial proceeding or gives a statement to federal law enforcement officers. The judicial system has not corruptly mistreated Mr. Libby; Mr. Libby has been found by a jury of his peers to have corrupted the judicial system.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/30/2007]Sentenced to 30 Months in Prison - Libby will be sentenced to 30 months in prison (see June 5, 2007), but will have his sentence commuted before he serves any time (see July 2, 2007).

Writing in anticipation of a judicial sentence for convicted felon Lewis Libby, columnist Byron York publishes a column in the conservative National Review criticizing the sentencing recommendation made by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Though Libby could theoretically be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for his four felony convictions (see March 6, 2007), Fitzgerald is asking Judge Reggie Walton to sentence him to 30-37 months in jail (see May 25, 2007), appropriate, Fitzgerald says, because of the seriousness of the investigation which he obstructed. York argues that Fitzgerald never proved anyone in the White House violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, but in his recommendation Fitzgerald argues that his grand jury “obtained substantial evidence indicating that one or both of the… statutes may have been violated.” York states that Fitzgerald is asking Walton to sentence Libby as if he had indeed committed such a violation: “Because the investigation defendant was convicted of endeavoring to obstruct focused on violations of the IIPA and the Espionage Act, the court much calculate defendant’s offense level by reference to the guidelines applicable to such violations.” York argues that because Fitzgerald was never able to prove that any violations of either the IIPA or the Espionage Act were committed, Walton cannot sentence Libby in light of his obstruction of that investigation. York says that a pre-sentencing report poses a different view: As quoted in Fitzgerald’s brief, the report states, “The criminal offense would have to be established by a preponderance of the evidence [but] the defendant was neither charged nor convicted of any crime involving the leaking of [Valerie Plame Wilson’s] ‘covert’ status.” The pre-sentencing report therefore supports a lighter sentence. Fitzgerald continues, “The reasons why Mr. Libby was not charged with an offense directly relating to his unauthorized disclosures of classified information regarding Ms. Wilson included, but were not limited to, the fact that Mr. Libby’s false testimony obscured a confident determination of what in fact occurred, particularly where the accounts of the reporters with whom Mr. Libby spoke (and their notes) did not include any explicit evidence specifically proving that Mr. Libby knew that Ms. Wilson was a covert agent.” [National Review, 5/29/2007] Libby will be sentenced to 30 months in prison (see June 5, 2007), but will have his sentence commuted before he serves any time (see July 2, 2007).

Friends of convicted felon Lewis Libby fear that when Judge Reggie Walton sentences Libby (see June 5, 2007), Libby will be sent directly to jail. A member of the Libby Legal Defense Trust (see February 21, 2006) says, “I think that he will get some jail time and probably be sent away that day.” [US News and World Report, 5/30/2007]

Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond. [Source: Wall Street Journal]Senator Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-MO), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, demands that former CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson explain what he calls “differences” in her various accounts of how her husband, Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq was attempting to secretly buy uranium from that nation (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003).
Plame’s differing versions have furthered “misinformation” about the origins of the case that roiled official Washington beginning in July 2003, Bond says. A recently released CIA memo from February 2002 said Plame Wilson “suggested” her husband for the trip. Bond says this is at odds with Plame Wilson’s March 2007 testimony before Congress, where she said a CIA colleague first suggested her husband for the trip (see March 16, 2007). In Bond’s version of events, Plame Wilson has told three different versions of events: in 2003 or 2004, she told the CIA’s Inspector General that she suggested Wilson; in 2004, she told committee staffers that she wasn’t sure if she had suggested Wilson (see July 9, 2004); in her March testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, she said that a colleague had first suggested Wilson for the trip. A spokeswoman for Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the committee chairman, says she is not sure whether Rockefeller is interested in having committee investigators interview Plame Wilson, but Bond says he has asked the CIA for permission to re-interview her. Melanie Sloan, the attorney representing Plame Wilson, says her client has “always been very consistent that she is not the person responsible for sending Joe Wilson” to Africa. Instead, Sloan says, trying to impugn Plame Wilson’s truthfulness is an attempt to draw attention from the “real wrong here—a White House that outed a covert operative and undermined national security.” [USA Today, 5/30/2007] The Senate Intelligence Committee did report that Plame Wilson recommended Wilson for the trip, but that report was based on somewhat inaccurate information provided in a State Department memo; both in her March 2007 testimony and her book Fair Game, Plame Wilson recalls that a young records officer first suggested that Wilson be sent (see February 19, 2002, July 22, 2003, October 17, 2003, and July 20, 2005).

The lawyers for convicted felon Lewis Libby (see March 6, 2007) submit their recommendations for Libby’s upcoming sentencing. After quoting “over 160 heartfelt letters submitted to the court on his behalf” (see May 31, 2007) describing Libby as “distinguished… generous… selfless [and] devoted,” the brief lauds Libby’s career as a government official “dedicat[ed] to promoting freedom abroad and keeping Americans safe at home,” and recommends Libby be granted probation without any jail time. Libby’s public service, and his devotion to his children and family, warrant such a light sentence, the lawyers argue. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/31/2007 ; Associated Press, 5/31/2007] The lawyers also argue that the sentencing recommendation of 30-37 months in prison, as provided by the government (see May 25, 2007), is “wrong as a matter of both fact and law.” [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 5/31/2007 ] Libby will be sentenced to 30 months in prison by Judge Reggie Walton, the low end of the sentencing recommendation provided by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (see June 5, 2007).

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